


There are names for what binds us

by lilith_morgana



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-28 12:46:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 37
Words: 53,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2733059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He hands her his heart; she can feel the weight of it in her chest. </p><p>- - -<br/>A lover's dictionary: Skyhold edition.  Trevelyan/Blackwall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title and inspiration from the poem “For what binds us” by Jane Hirshfield. 
> 
> Blackwall/Trevelyan has consumed me; thanks to tumblr and its Blackwall fans I have an even harder time to look away. :)
> 
> This lover's dictionary will pretty quickly turn very spoilery for Blackwall's personal quest and the game itself so beware if you haven't finished either!

**amble  
** _(noun)  
_  
  
They take walks together when the breach above them is a wide, growing tear in the sky and Haven still stands.  
  
A quickly formed habit, like tending to wounds or getting your weapons in good fighting condition after some time out in the field.  
  
Blackwall is solid and direct and Evelyn likes to think he finds her amusing enough to converse with; she asks him about battles fought and battles to come, asks for opinions and advice. In turn he poses questions about the Chantry, about her training, about how she thinks they can help Thedas. They share a devout passion for blades and the craft behind them, a fondness for poking around in the miserable and the mundane and beyond that they don't have much in common but distances are breached by the madness of the entire situation, by the way he glances at her as she walks by his side to gather elfroot for the medics or wood for the fire.  
  
There's safety in numbers and there's _comfort_ in him. A rare sort of solace that seeps into her thoughts, rendering him different from the rest of the people she has tied to her cause.  
  
It seems very simple, at first.

 

* * *

 

**ardour  
** _(noun)  
_  
  
A while ago he would never have thought it possible for the battle-hardened, serious woman standing before him in the Hinterlands to become such a distraction from duty.  
  
Not for a moment had he stopped to consider the possibility. He's too old with too little to offer and she's not his type - when he can still remember it - far from the simple, charming ladies of the taverns he's spent most of his best years frequenting. Thom Rainier always did like girls and he liked them warm, willing and wicked. The kind of girl that can make a man feel better about himself.  
  
This one has a far greater purpose in life than giving a damn about the ego of some wreck under her command.  
  
Lady Trevelyan is forged from hard training and determination, from faith in herself and the cause she carries; she is the kind of leader that brings a scent of war everywhere she goes but manages to hide that dark promise of _destruction_. She could make dying like a dog out on some remote battlefield seem enjoyable if she wanted, he's sure of it. Her mind is sharp, far more educated than his own but lacking his wretched experience, he wagers; she understands politics and war and religion and the price of all three. Like the Lady Seeker she is stern and principled, though not half as unwilling to let her softness and vulnerability shine through. A good woman, he thinks as he watches her discuss supplies with the blacksmiths. Compassionate, fair, level-headed. The kind of person you can follow without doubt.  
  
He wishes it could remain that way; it would be enough.   
  
She seeks his company and he steers the conversations onto safe ground but he slips, Maker knows he _slips_ because he's been on his own for so many years that he's been consumed by the kind of unspeakable loneliness that marks you worse than that Fade wound on her hand, makes people look away. But Lady Trevelyan folds her arms across her chest and looks at him like she can't even notice.  
  
And then that laugh when he manages to say something she finds funny – _endearing_ she says, as though she isn't half his age, as though he's a man who deserves the mercy of living. That laugh: deep in her throat and obvious yet so rare that he can tell she's a little surprised to hear it herself and it makes him forget himself for a blissful second, makes him forget why he's here, what he's set on doing.  
  
Andraste help him, that fucking _laugh_. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**  
****bareback**  
 _(adj. adv.)_  
  
  
Evelyn feels his gaze, strong as the sun that beats down on her forehead, the bridge of her nose. She wipes away sweat with the back of her hand and can't refrain from grimacing when the smell of horse hits her. Bloody horses. Their hooves could break through her chest and she is supposed to tame them, subject them to her will?

"Once more," Blackwall says. There's a smile in there somewhere and it lands deep in her belly. She can trace amusement around the corners of his words, amusement and surprise, perhaps. He must have expected a Chantry trained noblewoman to be better at this, of course; quelling the urge to explain and excuse herself she sighs and mounts the horse. It's the powerlessness in being mediocre that claws at her, causing her to bite down hard on a handful of curses.

“I wasn't meant to _ride_ into battle,” she mutters and tries to adjust herself on the broad animal beneath her. Truth be told she doesn't much like animals, especially not horses, but she can see the thread of associations and assumptions that kind of confession will bring - that Lady Trevelyan finds herself too elevated to be among dirty creatures of the pasture, that she considers herself a noble soul far above sullying her hands with this. It feels important to her that Blackwall doesn't view her in that light. “I was going to be made invincible with generous servings of lyrium and the Chant of Light.” 

He hums softly in response to that but says nothing.

When she takes hold of the reins he nods towards her hands, then moves one of his own over hers to adjust her grip slightly around the leather straps. The weather is too hot for gloves and she feels calloused skin against hers, his broad palm soft against her scraped knuckles. The hands of a blacksmith or a woodworker, she thinks, full of scars and old burns. Restless hands that demand work. He doesn't let go immediately; she looks at him from her strangely elevated position but he doesn't meet her gaze, merely lets his hand rest together with hers and gives it a small squeeze.

"Better," he says. It's not a question.

"Better," she agrees. It's a small change but it does feel different, the lines of her body more aligned with the horse.

"We'll make a jouster out of you yet, my lady."

“Perhaps.”

She looks at him as he takes a few steps back and when he tilts his head up again their eyes meet and Evelyn wants to stay in the moment, greedy for his company, for his attention. Blackwall possesses an honesty that only comes with experience, a way of looking at her that doesn't hide his admiration for her. She can see much darker things there too: doubt, hardships, a fiery sort of anger that seems to travel inwards, a brokenness sometimes when he doesn't think she's watching. But it's the unmasked regard for her that lingers, that visits her thoughts far too often and leaves a stark, starving echo in her body. No one has seen her the way he sees her, she is certain of it; she had no idea it would be so powerful.   
  
He folds his arms across his chest and nods, as if to dissolve her ridiculous thoughts. “Now, try loping.” **  
  
  
  
**

* * *

**  
  
  
****benedictions**  
 _(see: Canticle of Benedictions)_ ****  
  
  
Among all the days that rush by without distinction he marks a few in his memory.

His sister's death: flowers every year to remember, always, a life that never was. 

His victory in the Grand Tourney: to remember, always, the arrogance and pride of youth, the insatiable hunger that comes from having nothing and being no one.  
  
His promotion to Captain: to remember, always, what he threw away.  
  
A carriage intercepted by an ambush: _Mockingbird, mockingbird, quiet and still._ To remember, always, what he is.  
  
Four days, marked as anniversaries to him alone. It's the fourth one that has caused more tavern fights than he dares to count, those first years when he would be drinking until he had rid himself of the last scraps of dignity and honour and could fall into whatever hole that appeared beneath his feet. Fights, quarrels, bets and brawls. So many taverns in small towns along the road that leads him away from himself.

Tonight he visits another tavern in another small town and he sits alone in a corner, participating in the kind of distant company he's grown so accustomed to. Some needs can be quelled with very little, he knows from experience. Listening to the awful bard's attempts at singing. Watching a table full of soldiers laugh about their latest training, coming up with lewd jokes about officers and serving girls alike. Before Blackwall, while he was still on the run, he'd walk up to such a table and lecture them about respect and duty, about selflessness and greed. Big words and harsh reprimands. Entirely too harsh, of course; they mean no harm and he has been just like them. He has been _just_ like them. 

With a sigh, he empties his tankard and looks towards the entrance.

"Can I sit with you?"

 _Maker_ , _yes_ , he thinks before he's even looked up to see who's asking. There's a sudden movement in the corner of his eye and then, out of thin air, the Inquisitor appears carrying a wine bottle and two goblets. She places one in front of him and fills it up in one swift move. _A woman after my own heart._ "Here. I owe you a drink."

Blackwall clears his throat. "Owe me?"

"You took a nasty blow for me today." She studies him intently for a second, seemingly concerned that he would have forgotten something like that. He had, but he doesn't tell her that.

"It's what I'm here for, my lady," he tells her instead.

"No. It's not. But thank you." The concern lingers on her face as she leans down a little, and he catches her scent in the stale tavern. Like a breath of icy air, a blow to the pattern made up of ale and sweat. A jolt of fresh, clean _life_ mucking up his wretched history and he can't remember the last time he welcomed something so wholeheartedly. "Are you all right?”

“No complaints,” he says, thinking another lie hardly matters.   
  
Not tonight.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
 **beyond the grave**  
( _idiom_.)  
  
“You gave your life,” she tells him long before she understands how little he values it. “You sacrificed yourself.”  
  
Blackwall looks at her and there's fear in his gaze, actual _fear_ that suddenly passes and is replaced by a relief that is so tangible that she has to swallow, avert her eyes. In her memory of the nightmare she has just lived through he dies for her, over and over again without a word, without blinking.  
  
She is not sure if it reassures her or if it _should_.  
  


 


	3. Chapter 3

**cadence  
** ( _noun_ )

  
  
He keeps himself busy while they search for the lost after Haven falls: he gathers wood and chops it with whatever sharp edge they have available, he takes a few of the footsoldiers hunting in the forest, he keeps watch by the fire claiming Wardens require less sleep and hoping nobody will challenge that, he watches, he wards, he waits, when they lose their wounded he carries the corpses away from camp while Mother Giselle recites words of faith to deaf ears; he does not allow himself to think about the one person everyone talk about incessantly.  
  
And then the way she _lives_ and he realises when he sees her walk out of the tent that it no longer hurts to breathe.

 

He keeps himself busy when they settle into the old keep and its vast sense of space and history: he rebuilds caved-in walls, he cuts down gnarled old trees to make room for what someone tells him is going to be a medical garden, he tends to the few animals that made it through the whole journey, he helps the Commander train the most nervous young soldiers in order to soothe their nerves and instil some courage; he does not allow himself to think about the Lady Inquisitor unless she actively seeks out his company. He knows this is how it must be. He also knows the notion of him will wash away with the myriad of tasks and obligations she will have now, knows she will be better off if she never again considers him anything but a strong arm in battle and another body to put between herself and Corypheus when that day comes.

And then the way she  _looks_ at him when he tells her this, the way her mouth opens and then wordlessly closes, her gaze never leaving his.

  
  
  


* * *

 

 

**cagey  
** ( _adj_ .)

  
  
Thedas marches on.  
  
Even after everything they put their world through, all the bloodshed and torment, every method they find for hurting each other, for stripping each other of life and honour. Even after Haven. Thedas marches on and lately she thinks it has begun to wonder if it happens faster now, if time moves more quickly since she was cast out of the Fade with a mark on her hand.  
  
It makes her want to hold on to what she can, gather her resources around her.  
  
She finds him by the fire, a solitary figure with the bustling courtyard as a backdrop. He appears to be resting for once, perhaps for the first time since she met him months ago, his hands unoccupied, face still and closed-off. It is as if he's calmed since they arrived at Skyhold or since he widened the distance between the two of them - _whatever you want this to be_ \- and she feels a jolt of frustration, running red and hot at that thought. 

The crowd outside mask the sound of her steps but she can tell he already knows she's there. He usually does, seems to live his whole life as though he's keeping vigil. They say Wardens have high sensitivity to their surroundings, their bodies always teetering on the edges of everything. She wants to ask if this is why but knows he wouldn't offer much.

"My lady." He turns his head slightly, so she can meet his gaze as she walks closer and sits down beside him on the floor. The wood is dry and uneven against her palms when she adjusts her position, leaning back on her hands and wondering how his voice can be so very different when he speaks to her, how it can reach those depths of reserved gentleness. "Is there something you need?"

"I just... wanted your company."  
  
“I see.” He nods and she thinks his face looks softer, less composed. She lets herself relax, sink into it.

It's been a rush these past few days. A hurried dance of practical matters and pragmatic worry, of maps being unfolded and letters being sent; she has barely slept and she knows her advisors haven't either, can tell by their worn faces, their red eyes. Evelyn has cleaned out more rooms than she can count, dragged piles of junk outside to be burned, cut through thick cobweb with daggers and aided where she has been needed. No manual labour is ever asked of her specifically, but she finds it absurd to sit by and watch others work, has been away from her noble roots too long for that. Once, Leliana had told her that Evelyn reminds her of the Hero of Ferelden, apart from the cleaning. _She could barely keep herself tidy when we travelled together. I do not know how she would have managed to clean a whole keep._

Blackwall shifts, looking like he's about to get up but he remains where he is. They're not speaking but it feels as if they are - always that way with him, she realises, that peculiar sensation of _sharing_ something even when they are silent or both of them preoccupied.  
  
Her hand slides over her leg, a little closer to his. She looks down as though her motions aren't controlled by her own will, as though there's a pull in the air between them that inches them closer together and his face is so close now when he looks at her and breath catches at his expression.  
  
“My lady,” he says again but there's not as much resolve behind the words now as before, not as much conviction in the deep, dark notes. “I hope you can forgive me for pushing you away.”  
  
If she leans one fraction to her left, just a little, her arm will be pressed up against his and the warmth of his body will seep into hers. It makes her feel both clumsy and impatient, this _wanting_ , this need for something he isn't willing to offer her. _So very unbecoming, my dear girl._ At the same time it is utterly familiar: misplaced infatuations and misunderstandings, her head filled with echoes of being ugly Evelyn, the unremarkable child in a proudly remarkable family. She had been ugly Evelyn even as she was being kissed in the dark corners, _especially_ then, knowing she was someone's shame; every year just another addition to the endless cartography of her unrequited longings.  
  
Yet this – _he_ \- is different in ways she cannot articulate, even to herself.  
  
Her hand is on his arm now and he holds it in place with his own that is hot like the flames; when he exhales his breaths stir her hair. Evelyn lifts her gaze too look him in the eyes. There are gentle wrinkles at the corners, a faded scar above his right eyebrow, a birthmark half-hidden under rash black curls on his neck; she imagines dragging fingertips across all his markings and through all of his history, learning and relearning what sort of man he is, what has been done to him, what he has done to others.  
  
“You're the one beating yourself up over... something,” she says and watches the space behind him, watches the splinters of life and light break through all the open wounds of these old stables, falling across his features. _Give me your worst_ , she thinks. _I can take it. I know the Grey Wardens recruit at the gallows._  
  
She holds his gaze until the moment appears stretched wide and the mad rush of time slowed down. He's the first one to look away. 

“I can't hide anything from you,” he says and though he tries to make light of it, the corners of his mouth even curling upwards in a grin, she can hear overwhelming grief at the bottom of his voice.  
  
  
  
  
  


 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has received a lot more feedback than I thought, both here and on tumblr and I'm really happy you guys enjoy reading it. It makes writing it even more entertaining. :)

**  
****calling**  
( _noun_ )

  
He should never have left Markham.

Dull and rigid and _piss_ _poor_ as small towns may be they are good enough places for common folks to go about their lives without running into too much trouble. There's something about the atmosphere that creates decent, thick-skinned, hard-working people– or small-minded fools, but those frequent all cities and all classes – and Maker knows he could have used _that_.

But there was always that stitch of restlessness in him, something unsettled that kept him looking around, exploring and yearning like the pathetic sod he is. _A blighted curse_ according to his mother; the officers in the Orlesian army had singled it out and called it ambition. They're very fond of ambition, of course. Fond of men like Thom Rainier, men with empty hands and enough greed to fill them with something, anything. Every army needs its thugs, easily corrupted and easily tempted, convenient to cast out when they overstay their welcome. Even now he can spot a recruit just like him in every crowd he sees: the ditcher's daughter who's practised archery since the first time she saw a crossbow, the blacksmith's youngest son, the scullion's bastard, whole ranks filled to the brim with young people that stand ready to fight noblemen's wars.

Markham would have provided him with an ordinary life. Some honest manual labour, a house, perhaps a wife. There is no reason he could not have been satisfied with that. He's a simple man with simple tastes and he would have done Thedas an immense fucking favour if he could have accepted his original fate instead of chasing after a new one. _What are you hoping to find?_ Someone asked him this, in another life. He hadn't known how to answer back then, hadn't allowed himself to think about it.

 _A place that wants me_ , he thinks now because the years strip you of your pretences and reshape your ideas of dignity and he hasn't got much of the latter left at any rate.

 In some ways the Inquisition pulls him back, reaches through the layers of time and gives him the opportunity to be someone he might have been once, if the rest of his bloody life had never happened. It's a false existence and a hollow lie but it's better than the last couple of years, better than he deserves.

And then there's _her_. This impossible woman right beside him

She's a violent flurry of impressions and feelings, an unrest and a comfort all at once. She, too, breaches the distance to his life before he wrecked it apart but instead of illusions of starting over she brings with her a quiet, dull pain that stabs at his every thought about her, about what she could have been to him if he were the man she thinks he is. There is no sense in what he feels for her, he has no _right_ to it but then he remembers for one reason or another - the way she says his name, her affectionate gaze, the quick brush of her hand across his shoulder, the weight of the Warden-Constable's badge in his palm - that to her, he is merely Blackwall. To her, Thom Rainier has never existed and the power in that notion alone could drown him if he let it.

"What did you want to show me?" She's slightly breathless after their long trek uphill, her voice leaving traces in the damp and cold air around them.  
  
A pause; a twisted thread of thought wrapped even tighter around his mind.

He should never have left Markham and he wants to tell her this, tries to tell her this on a rain-soaked cliff by the coast.

He can't, of course. He can run from his childhood, run from responsibilities, run from the bloody army and the hangman at that, but he can't outrun his own cowardice. Those roots are buried deep beneath his feet, he takes them with him wherever he ends up. But Lady Trevelyan looks at him like he's brave and dignified, like he's a man who could do anything and he stares at the Grey Warden insignia again, wondering if it would be such a crime to let her believe that. He is of no use to anyone, serves no purpose in the world as Thom Rainier; there is no one in all of Thedas that has wasted a second of their lives missing the long lost Captain. This war will cut him down sooner rather than later and then his body will be ashes and memories, unable to remind anyone of any truths or causing her any more trouble. Until then, he decides, there's no need to be anything but Blackwall.

But there's a sharp taste of defeat in his mouth as he picks up the half-lies and omissions again, the wasted opportunities lurking in the shadows.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
 **campfire**  
( _noun_ )  
  
  
Back in camp the Fade mark wakes her up in the middle of the night.  
  
Such a small pain and normally it's barely there at all, but it lives its own life beneath her skin and some nights when everything else is at rest in her the remnants of the Fade burn stronger, faster. Eyes still closed she turns on the ground, hands reaching for something solid as her lucid thoughts return in a slow trickle. On their way back from her strange meeting with Blackwall they had ran into a rift and she had found it unusually draining to close it, had staggered and screamed and the moment stays with her, even now. Her mark is all they have – all _she_ has – and at the pit of every single one of her darkest, most trembling fears sits the notion that perhaps the mark will fail her.  
  
 _That the Maker will fail you._  
  
Evelyn crawls up and wraps the sheepskin coat tighter around her as she blinks herself awake. In the dusk of her tent she can see Sera on her stomach, snoring; she sleeps with her daggers carefully placed around the bedroll, on hand resting over the hilt of her favourite one.  
  
Outside the tent the soldiers on duty talk in hushed voices and with their faces turned towards the sky, where the wind creates ghosts, circling over their heads. And the sound of them, like a hymn or a horde.  
  
She's always enjoyed being out in the field like this, prefers the practical grit of military life over sitting by the war table, planning the course. Now more than ever. Hers is a body made for steel and mud, not letters and strategy. Thus far, one of the true benefits of the Inquisition's resources has been Josephine and how she can give voice to all of Evelyn's opinions and decisions, only with far more eloquence and no badly disguised anger. _Night and day, the two of you._  
  
When she's made it to the fire in their midst she can see Blackwall there, his broad frame casting a large silhouette against the tents in the background. Wardens have terrible nightmares. She remembers learning this from somewhere recently when she's looked around, trying to put the scant pieces of information about Wardens and their whereabouts together. An order of secrets, she thinks. Nothing could suit him better. At the same time there's an odd trail of truth in what they have, reluctant as he may be about it. Stark, upfront truth though it's such a fleeting thing, nearly impossible to trap behind words. She knows very little about him; she knows _him_.  
  
“Trouble sleeping, my lady?” His voice is deep and dark like the night that has swallowed everything around their small settlement. 

Evelyn takes a seat beside him in front of the fire. He gives her a sideways glance, she reaches into her coat and finds a bottle of one of the Skyhold healer's relaxing herbal mix spiked with a fair amount of strong cherry wine. Best of two worlds, as far as she's concerned. Blackwall accepts the bottle without asking. This is a habit that flows naturally between them by now, a mutual understanding: he sleeps badly, she often wakes up and together they sit out the worst part of the night.  
  
“No worse than usual,” she says, folding her arms across her chest and leaning towards the warmth of the flames. He feels warm at her side, too; she wonders how long he's been out here but doesn't ask. “Quiet night?”  
  
He nods briefly. “There were rumours of bandits along the coast but nothing so far.”  
  
“Good.” She takes the bottle from Blackwall's hand and swallows a big mouthful.  
  
They sit in silence for some time, allowing the wind and the sea speak alone. She is tired but her body is still too awake, too alert for rest and she looks down at her hand at that thought, observing the faint glow that always rises from it. In the very beginning she had taken to wearing thick leather gloves and wraps, trying to keep it disguised. Now it's bare.  
  
“Does it hurt?” Blackwall's words are gentle and his voice low and for a second she doesn't understand the question but as she lifts her gaze she can see that he's watching what she is watching: her hand.  
  
She shakes her head, taking a second gulp from the bottle before handing it back to him.  
  
“It's merely strange. Hard to stop thinking about it. And even if _I_ stop thinking about it, no one else does.”  
  
“No one's seen anything like it.”  
  
“Yeah.” She exhales, looks out over the camp then back at Blackwall. The expression on his face tells her he understands what she isn't saying, his eyes still tracing the uneven, floating edges of the mark. There's a shiver running through her entire body then, when she can feel his fingertips on her wrist. It's a small gesture, one they have allowed each other to make before, one that slips without notion into their pattern. It's a small gesture, but it feels big. “Is it strange to touch? For someone else, I mean?”  
  
The question slips out before she's had time to regret it, to remember that she doesn't necessarily _want_ an answer. But he merely shakes his head, offering a slight smile.  
  
“Nothing strange about it, my lady.”  
  
“You're too kind.” She smiles back as Blackwall removes his hand and picks up the bottle from the ground.  
  
“I'm really not,” he says.  
  
He leans back to drink and she watches his face, thinking it alters so quickly sometimes, always dancing on the separating lines between different emotions. Or different _people_. Now it's composed again, not as approachable as it had been only moments ago; she likes the man he is when he's around her but she is equally interested in the other men he's harbouring, locked away somewhere. She wonders, too, if he hides them from her or from himself.  
  
“I'm not scared of your history,” she says; the bottle is back with her again, only a mouthful or two left now. She downs it while the skies soar with a quick but momentary increase of wind and her memories of the badge in his hand before resurface. The way his gaze had faltered, like a light going out.  
  
“My lady.” His voice is hard now, closed-off and gruff. “Don't be so quick to make such promises.”  
  
Evelyn can feel the wine in her blood like a friendly little fire spreading it warmth to every too-alert, frozen nook of her body.  
  
“It's not a promise, it's a _bet_.”  
  
He raises an eyebrow at that, his expression shifting again to something that is much closer to the admiration she has grown accustomed to. _You see_ , she thinks smugly. _I know you, Warden Blackwall. I know your kind._  
  
“Nothing frightens you, does it?” His tone is amused and tired, worn down.  
  
“A lot of things frighten me,” she says truthfully. “But you are not one of them.”  
  
There's a part of her that half-expects him to say _I should be_ , but he doesn't. Instead he gives her a look that she can't interpret well, at least not at this late hour, and she carries it with her to the Fade as she spreads out on her bedroll and falls asleep again, accompanied by Sera's snoring and the distant sound of thunder.  


* * *

 

 **chasm  
** ( _noun_ )

  
His stance outside, on her balcony when he still somewhat believes in his own resolve, in his own attempts at coaxing himself to believe it's all a soldier thing, not worth risking anything for. Tale as old as time, nothing complicated or strange about it - war and death need counter-weight, preferably several: drinking, laughing, fucking. He's done that shit enough to know it's hardly worth risking anything for, especially not this. _Her_.  
  
Her smile when she sees him, when his half-hearted reasoning ends in a wholeheartedly desperate _I just had to see you._ Her eyes wide and hungry like his own then, her hands on his back in a heartbeat, as though she's waited and she _has_ , a fact that flares up in him like fire. Her mouth against his, soft and full and _greedy_ in a way that shatters every last bit of conviction he may have had when he walked here.  
  
His cowardice, again.  
  
Her voice, low and firm and reassuring, as though she's made from the mountain outside her windows, her resolve vast enough for them both. _I get to decide what I deserve, not you. I'm not letting you go._  
  
His hands tangled up in her hair, his mouth on her neck, her jaw, travelling down her collarbones while she drags her fingers down his back, muttering that he wears _too_ _much_ _bloody_ _clothes_. His real name temporarily forgotten for a few blissful moments as she whispers another man's.  


 


	5. Chapter 5

  


**consideration  
** ( _noun_ )

  
A hand pressed lightly against the small of her back out in the field; a reminder to lower her shoulders, shift the weight of her heavy load. Then later - because she forgets herself a moment after he's walked away - two strong hands on her shoulders, travelling down her spine.

A quick run through a morning-crisp field near the Exalted Plains, not even in full armour and with only daggers in her belt, because she thinks he might want to see the hordes of halla walking through the early sunrise or because she wants to watch them by his side.

  


* * *

  
  
  
**contrition  
** ( _noun_ )

  
This is a swathe of land that reeks of war.

He's travelled through these regions of the Dales before, of course, though most of his memories and impressions have merged with the rest of the recollections of his travels, of never staying too long in one place, trying to drag up every root and burn it. Do it long enough and eventually the world starts to melt, the curves and lines of it becoming an unbroken circle. But these plains stand out in that blur, their nakedness and scars overwhelming even now. 

 _The land is angry here_ , someone told him the last time he was here. He had been an outlaw then, living off stolen goods and coin he made from killing wild animals or carrying heavy things for widows or the elderly. _It still remembers._

The first time he was here he had travelled with his captain. He had been young then and not yet tempered in the eyes of his superiors but she had confided in him, had seen beyond the foul-mouthed commoner and his cloak of arrogance. _This is the way to endure the rest of it, Rainier_ , she had told him as they were knee-deep in cold water, trying to reclaim an abandoned keep for the army. Her face had been damp with sweat and dirt and he had looked down at the large chunks of mud that were hanging from his chest-plate thinking _you're fucking mad_ but even then he had understood what she meant. Orlais can eat a man up unless you're willing to fight to the death - with words and weapons and an amount of fluent wit he's never possessed - every moment of every day but being out on a filthy battlefield offers perspective, anchors you in the world that lives and breathes and dies outside of The Sun Gates. He'd learned this in the Exalted Plains once.

This time there is little left to learn for a man like him and passing through the burning ruins in what has been described to them as a truce feels like defeat. As though this is a place on their maps that is trying to cave in on itself, collapse and become forgotten along with its own secrets and wounds.

"It's sorrowful here," the boy spirit says by Blackwall's side as they stop for the night in the shell of what once appears to have been a colourful, beautiful village. The Inquisitor's orders. She had chosen a route today that had resulted in more far more defeats than victories and left them without much option other than put up a camp and attempt to heal their wounded.

"War will do that."

He feels uneasy in the spirit's presence, awkwardly, painfully uneasy and far too transparent in his discomfort which makes the kid look at him even more intently. He's searching, Blackwall thinks. For what he can't say but in his case it doesn't matter. _Anything you find in there will be rotten and black, lad._

"You want to be better now," the kid says, on cue. "You are better. It is good that you try."

Always with the prying that feels like a half-arsed guessing game but that still cuts into his very heart, every fucking time. One day it's the strangled dog, the next he sings the song that followed Callier's children to their grave; Blackwall has no means to defend himself, nothing to even _say_ that won't give away his pathetic cover. 

All he can do is glare at him. " _Stop_."

The Inquisitor and the Tevinter mage are approaching them now, having scouted the opposite side of the area they've claimed as theirs for the night. Dusk has begun to settle already, though he recalls that it never gets entirely dark out here, that the intense light from the stars is draping the night, softening it. It always seems cruelly ironic when such a beautiful place is a battlefield.

When he looks at her Evelyn catches his gaze for a second and he notices a quick half-smile on her lips. So does Cole, it appears.

"Your head is calmer when she's near. Sadder, but _calm_. Softer. You worry. She is not you. She's much stronger than you."

With a stifled groan, Blackwall leans down to pick up his shield and his backpack and get away from a one-sided conversation that threatens to shatter something in him or cause him to punch a spirit-turned-kid in the face and he's not thrilled about either one of those prospects. Beneath his feet as he walks away, the earth sings old stories of old battles. Lives being erased, wiped out, leaving nothing but blood stains and furious shadows in their wake.

 _What in the Maker's name did you do, Rainier?_   His captain – _Ser_ Adele by then, the lines in her face less forgiving, her voice deeper - stands in an archway outside the chantry in his memory. She's all but cloaked in darkness, a hunched figure. Despite that she had never appeared as far above him as she did then, never as elevated, as _conceited_ as when she had torn apart every attempt to explain. He had not made excuses, at least not any he remembers now, but he had wanted to talk, to tell someone. She had been a poor choice; there hadn't been anyone else.

 _That's easy for you to say_ , he had spat, still confused by the brutal borders of the new world he'd made for himself, the way they had trapped his heart and narrowed his chest, tightening every emotion and passion into stone. In a fortnight, he had learned, she would be travelling with Ser Robert and the other chevaliers to the Winter Palace. It would not matter what any of their thugs had done or to whom.

 _It is easy for me to say_ , she had retorted and her _voice_ then, the delicate, shattering way it had cut through every word. _Because I would never have done what you just did._

 

 

\---

 

Later that night when they have tended to their injuries and counted their losses - two footsoldiers dead, nine injured - he finds the Inquisitor walking along the edges of the ruins, as if she's trying to discern where walls once stood and where one place ended and another one began. She kneels down by a spot of yellow grass and dried roses - it looks like it used to be a bush, perhaps someone's garden.

He watches her for a while, not certain she wants his company. Not certain he wants hers. They had ran into unexpected resistance today, had crashed into magical barriers and various abominations and lost more than he thinks she's counted on. He knows the hurt after a miscalculation. Knows the hurt that comes with responsibilities and trust and when he allows himself to think about the extent to which she is responsible for the future for them all he feels his chest tighten. _She is stronger than you_ the spirit echoes in his head, as though he had to peer into Blackwall's mind to learn _that_ . As though Blackwall had needed to be convinced of her _strength._ As though he hadn't known it since she first swept into the Hinterlands and carried them all with her. It's not her power or her capability he worries about; he is afraid what it will cost her to be that strong, in what way it will destroy her.

When he walks up to her eventually, she slips into his embrace without words, without effort; they stand together in the grey night, her chin resting on his shoulder and his hands on her hips with nothing but the dull sound of history being written and rewritten as their backdrop.

 

* * *

 

 

 **cull  
** ( _verb_ )

 

Mistakes not remembered up on the roof with a setting sun ahead and the faintest hint of clouds approaching in the distance. It means infinitely less up here what happens between diplomats and nobles, what takes place in between all the letters and decrees. "And they're all shit, yeah?" Sera reminds her. "Not like you. You matter."

The paths and strategies decisively not chosen as she sits besides Cullen at his desk, trying to make sense of his maps and her thoughts. His mind is clear, precise; she feels light in his company, less weighed down by the world because the commander will help her carry it and she knows this without doubt, without preamble.

  
Defeats that pale away and turn into a blurry sense of release when she downs her fourth drink and Dorian gracelessly spits out half of his own while Bull chants something nearly inaudible, urging them both to keep going. It might be a competition, she is not certain. She might win, she is not certain. She does know that Bull's shoulder tastes of sweat and ale later, as she falls asleep on it while he carries her to bed.

  
Questions and doubts never voiced in the stables when she opens her mouth but catches hold of that endlessly tender look in Blackwall's eyes as he stands in front of her, looking at her like she's a novelty and a miracle every time, mirrored in the way his mouth brushes over hers before he kisses her. Their hands intertwine on his chest and she sheds a day's worth of worry, bit by bit, as her fingertips count the beats of his heart.

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

 

 

**dawn  
** ( _noun_ )

 

She sits by his bedroll when he tears himself out of the Fade.

"Good morning."

He's bleary, too slow; he blinks and notices a smile curling the corners of her mouth and wonders if he's overslept and missed something important. It wouldn't surprise him. Their time in the desert by the Western Approach makes him sleep better than he has in years: he may not be built for scorching sun and relentless heat - Varric suffers even worse while Dorian makes a ridiculous point of basking in the sunlight like some sort of Tevinter snake - but the reward is an exhaustion that knocks him out in the evenings and offers solid, dreamless rest. A good night's sleep in the middle of a war, who would have thought.

He blinks again, watching her frame unfold against the early sun.   
  
“Did you save the world without me, my lady?”

“Nah.” She offers a slightly introverted, intimate smile. "I just wanted to look at you for a moment."

"Look at me?" His voice is thick from disuse and little more than a deep rumble; Evelyn inches closer, one hand spread out over his bare chest. There's a teasing gentleness to her fingertips, matched by her mouth that is slightly open and he inhales, thinking of other lives and other places, different circumstances. _Opportunities_. Maker knows he has a lot of things in mind – chastity suits him badly - but he cannot bring himself to act on it, not completely, not like this.

"Look at you," she repeats as she dips her head and plants a kiss over his heart, then another one. He reaches out a hand to touch her head, the soft, curly thatch of dark brown hair that looks like a horse's mane but feels like silk running between his calloused fingers. "It's good for morale."

He has to laugh at that and she looks up, grinning broadly now; he pulls her down gently so she's lying beside him, resting her head on his arm and facing one of the countless broken roofs in Griffon Wing Keep.

"You have rather questionable taste in men," he mutters, lips grazing her scalp that smells of warm summer and sand, always sand here that gets under their skin. The desert is never still, it disguises and it reveals, the shifting banks transforming everything in their way.

"Or a twisted idea of morale," she adds and makes a content little noise as she settles into the position, one hand still idly moving across his chest. He closes his eyes trying to push away the endless, spiralling web of thoughts that she brings with her. It feels gut-wrenchingly selfish to be here with her, _pretending_ , as though he has a right to this sort of life with this sort of woman. She wants the Grey Warden from the Hinterlands with his fucking selfless honour and intact soul, she has never asked for a monster in her life, a cowardly murderer in her bed, and he winces at the brutality of that notion.

What passes between them has been deceptively easy ever since his resolve fell to pieces and he stood in her bedroom nursing the vain hope that she would do what he could not and drive him away, force him out of her life. Even if she had refused, what came after has been easy because he lies: _You are a good man. The world is a better place because you have lived._ Every moment of every day he lies, to everyone, including himself and the creature that stares at him occasionally from mirrors and windows when he hasn't averted his gaze fast enough. He lies until he runs out of words, of breath, of thoughts, and then she comes to see him and he finds himself too exhausted to spin another tale so instead he tells her almost nothing and somehow that silence feels like the most honest, naked confession of them all: _I am nothing. This is all I can give you._

What passes between them is a bittersweet distraction and infinitely more than he has any right to ask for but it's far from what he wants. It's not enough, he feels all of a sudden with surprising force. He _wants_ her. He wants _her_. He wants another man's life and this woman in it and he finds that while he's not in a position to make any demands or bargains he's often reasoning with the Maker he's given up on - _that has given up on you, Reinier_ \- to be allowed a little more, a little longer. Always a greedy, desperate bastard, of course. Some things never change. What scares him is the fact that his vain, fleeting desire for being something more than a strong arm to send into war had made him catch every opportunity Ser Robert had thrown his way, swallow every bite. Because he hungered, or thought he had. In comparison that wish had been a little bruise; this desire is a wound that cuts to the bones of him, leaves him bare.

He fears what it could make him do, what it could turn him into; he clings to it like he'd cling to salvation if he believed in it.

As they hear sudden noises from the soldiers nearby Evelyn sits up, a quick, fluid motion that stands out in his recollection of her because her frame is broad and bulky like his own, not naturally graceful. But she's used to this, he's come to realise. Being in the dark, jumping at the mere sight of a light among the shadows. _I don't want to embarrass you,_ she had told him once and there had been a quiet resignation behind the words, a depth to them that he hadn't understood until he thought about it afterwards and realised what she had said, what it had _meant_. He wants to correct her - wants to physically hurt everyone who has ever made her think she is embarrassing - but he doesn't know what to say. There is so little he can offer, that he could ever offer.

"You are beautiful, my lady," he says, grateful for truths at least; glad for the way they form crisp and clear at the back of his tongue. He lets his hand run down her cheek, his thumb caressing the lines of her chin. There's warmth in her eyes when she looks at him. " _Remarkable_."

"You have rather questionable taste in women." Her shoulders ease again and she relaxes a little, making it easy for him to pull her back down. This time she rests her head against his chest, breathing hot puffs of air into the greying hair and old scars and his skin that tickles and burns. "But I can live with that."

_Can she, Thom?_ _Can_ you?

He kisses her then with frustrated desperation in an attempt to shut the doors to his past and when Evelyn moans softly beside him, her fingers digging into the muscles of his back he wonders what price he will pay for this cowardly selfishness. It is the most precious thing he has ever had; the cost must be unimaginable.

Outside the slowly restored keep the sand moves.

 

* * *

 

 

**daze  
** ( _noun_ )

 

The nightmare traps them in their own minds and their own hearts, together but separate.

She feels the hollowness of her own power - the one she stole or stumbled across - like an open wound in her body. The fading memories of the the Chant of Light in her head to shield her, clinging to a faith that never seemed important before but now, she thinks as she steers towards the only light she can see, now it keeps her whole. _Now you know_ , the voices whisper in her head. _Is that not what you wanted, human? The truth?_

She feels the losses at Adamant fortress, thick and sore in her throat. The warriors on their knees as the mages weave spells around them, the magical energy so heavy in the air that it brings tears to her eyes and she thinks of templar instructors, thinks of reasonable men and women wanting to protect against this, wanting to balance the scales. That path is long since abandoned and soundly buried in the ruins of Haven but the nightmares know.

She feels the burden of command falling out of the Fade yet again, unscathed and unbloodied because some things are not easily discernible. The Warden by her side, unbowed and proud; an outstretched hand in the dark, a conviction in his voice, a regret that goes deep enough to re-shape him. All the stories she has heard about this man. The Hero of River Dane. The traitor teyrn. The way the Champion of Kirkwall had offered to die for him, like it was the most reasonable thing to do, like he'd make up for any imbalance of the scales, earn his survival.

"I don't trust the Grey Wardens," she tells him as they walk through the remains of them, battered to smithereens. "But I trust you."

He looks at her for a long time then, searching. "Fair enough."

Later, in the outskirts of camp as he is about to depart he gives her another searching glance.

"Keep your eyes on him," he says and she knows who he means without asking, without names or titles.

She doesn't ask why; she is not certain she wants to know.

_Is that not what you wanted, human? The truth?_  
  
The nightmare traps them in their own minds and their own hearts, together but separate.

  
  
  
  


 


	7. Chapter 7

 

 

 **decamp  
** ( _verb_ )

 

Lady Trevelyan, the proper one, would be thrilled.

Not about the military formal wear – _even you have assets, dear, such a shame to hide them_ – but the rest of it, the purpose and destination that awaits. Lady Trevelyan, the one who's slender and beautiful and has impeccable hair, would _approve_.

At times on the sparring ground, because Lady Trevelyan is unshakeable in her own fashion, Evelyn thinks of her mother's proud stature and composed face, thinks of her voice that never cracks or falters, thinks of her carefully mapped-out strategy for each of her children, her determination in seeing it through. She has never held a sword or shouted an order - shouted at all - but she could command an army if she had to and in the shadow of that it's nearly impossible not to feel small, to grasp at straws and fight for attention, for approval. _I am sorry I was never the daughter you hoped for; I am sorry I made you fail in your endeavours._

And then, as Evelyn had stood ready to leave for Haven, her mother's cool, dry hand around her own, placing a ring in her calloused palm. There's a smile there, small and tucked-in. A family history in the notes of her voice: _my grandmother gave this to my mother when she stood bride._ A tradition, expected to end with them, with her. A faint hope that it might not.

Now Evelyn sits with her back pressed against harsh wood on the way through forests and fields to the Empress and the Winter Palace and her fingers find the slender line of gold. Twirls it, round and round. It feels odd against her skin that is mostly used to bruises and blood but she has always liked jewellery; she takes comfort in the inherent pointlessness in their shape, finds it reassuring to think of objects, places, _people_ that do not need to serve a purpose.

"Are you nervous?" Blackwall asks beside her, his shape half-hidden by the shadows from the setting sun but his voice fills the carriage.

She looks up at him before nodding briefly. "I am."

His hand over hers then, the pad of his thumb rubbing softly over the back of her fingers and when his movement pauses momentarily, eyes studying the ring, she draws a sharp breath because the gold and its history suddenly feels misplaced between them and she cannot say why, only that it hurts.

   
  


* * *

 

 

 

 **defiant  
** ( _adj_.)

 

Even from a distance he can trace the tired desolation on her skin.

For hours now he has watched her work harder than he's ever seen her work before, steering between the nobles and the dance floor, balancing words and opinions and avoiding the Game. He knows how tired it makes her to be around large crowds. He knows it because at the end of such days he'll find her in the stables, by his work bench or in the darkness up on the loft. _You don't exhaust me, not like the others._ And this is not just a crowd, it's a pit full of lethal enemies that you'll have to fight with your sodding hands tied behind your back. It's a force, a horde of wild raving animals that makes him hate Orlais, hate the nobility, hate the fucking world that enables this to go on for generation after generation, hate himself for having known all this but been too weak to just walk away. Outside Halamshiral people starve to death; in the villages up north every disease is deadly because of the squalor, the stench of poverty that surrounds them; out on the battlefields good men and women are fighting for their lives because some pampered fool in here wants another slice of land or a bigger palace. It's _vile_ ; it makes them all less human and he knows the dangers of that better than anyone.

He wants to take her away from it all. Walk her to a quiet place and let her rest.

He wants to remove himself from the scene, too. Close his eyes, turn his back on this and pretend that it has never existed at all, that he has never been wrapped up in its net.

But more than anything - and this is what hits him hard at this awful gathering – he wants her to _smile_.

 _You should fall in love before you get too old_ , a veteran lieutenant had told him once, over a tankard of mead and a tavern full of pretty girls. _It gets worse, the older you become._ He no longer recalls what he had responded if he had responded at all or merely deemed him a mawkish old bastard; he understands the lieutenant better now.

The balcony looks like a cool place at this hour but Evelyn appears as warm as ever, leaning against the railing and looking down.

When he approaches he can tell from the way her posture shifts that she knows it's him. Her tense lines and sharp edges seem to relent a bit, giving way to a more relaxed stance and there's a surge through his body as he allows his gaze to follow the shape of her where she stands. Each precious time he catches her out of armour, unbound and not prepared for battle he is rendered half-useless by the way she looks completely different: soft, warm, full, strong even without metal and steel. The contrasts and complexities of that - of her - could occupy him for the rest of his life, he's sure of it.

It's not distracting, it's _defining_.  
  
And like the mawkish old bastard he is he wants to make her _happy_ no matter how badly suited he is for the task or how little time he may have left for such things before reality catches up with him.  
  
She does smile when he asks for a dance, though it's a brief, passing thing as though the evening - Maker forbid - has rubbed off on her. Her body is solid but oddly supple under his hands; her hand sure and heavy on his shoulder.

“I didn't know you danced.”  
  
“I did once.” There's a relief in speaking things that are _truths_ even if he's hardly confessing his sins. “In another life.”

"You were impressive tonight," he says, steering them a bit closer to the actual dance floor, even if it's merely a few steps. He doesn't intend to ruin the moment with company.

Evelyn smiles again, more easily now.  
  
"Thank you for coming with me. I know you didn't want to."

The stones in this place have long memories, he had thought to himself as he stood by an overblown statue, trying to shrink his own bulk to make himself less noticeable. Long memories, endless grudges. He had sworn to never return to Orlais but has broken that oath as many times as he has sworn it, again and again. For duty, for necessity, for _her_. He can't find any regret for that even if there's a thread of wild, tormenting worry after so many hours among people who once made him an outlaw, people who knew Callier, who knew the innocents lost and the murderer that ran free. All night he has heard rumours and conversations about people with connections to what he did, small fractions of the large puzzle and it seeps into his head, causing everything else to fade away. Even her.  
  
"It's... more complicated that that," he says truthfully.

A shadow crosses her face. "If you could tell me about it, I'm certain you would.”  
  
She doesn't sound convinced which he can hardly fault her for and he's opening his mouth to say something when he feels the press of her lips, hot and urgent. There's a pull between them tonight, a notion – _you're slipping away_ – that makes her fingers twist and yank his hair and his hands press her tightly against him, kissing her until they are interrupted by a few chattering guests seeking fresh air.  
  
She's the first one to step away, disentangle herself.

 


	8. Chapter 8

 

 **delectable  
** ( _adv_.)

  
  
  
Evelyn watches Blackwall stare at the tankard in front of him. He's quiet tonight, even for him. Despite being asked to come here, to be his company, she almost feels like an intruder in his private world of solitude.  
  
Her own ale is all but finished already, she's a quick drinker when she's in that mood and tonight is special.  
  
They have the tavern almost to themselves, a full section of it reserved for the Inquisitor and her friend, no questions asked or eyebrows raised. She wonders how much people read between the lines and what they see there, how the truth appears in front of their eyes.  
  
Some know without a doubt, of course. _Quite the man_ , Dorian teases in her head. _Burly_. The sly little crooks of his voice around those words still make her uncharacteristically embarrassed, as though he's peeked too deep into her personal desires and laid them bare for the world to see. For Blackwall to see, too, as though it isn't already obvious to him.  
  
Is it? She throws him another glance, allows it to linger. He had steered her to the table with a brief touch at the small of her back, she had ordered ale for them both. Small thing, mundane things, that gather in her chest.  
  
She could get used to this: being in his company with no hesitation, an intimacy becoming habitual and taken for granted because there's power in that, in not having to _fight_ for anything ever again; she's tired, they are both so tired and Thedas it set on exhausting itself too, crumbling under their feet wherever they go. Just a moment's respite, she bargains sometimes. One night - an hour of rest - a few heartbeats' worth of stillness.  
  
After their visit to the Winter Palace the world seems to have gone a bit more quiet but time itself has increased its maddening twists and turns and everything happens at once. A long ride back home – at times almost pleasant because they had saved the Empress and the blood on their hands had been scant, quickly forgotten - and then suddenly a subtle turmoil all over Skyhold about a new Divine and Evelyn had shook his head at first, denied the matter entrance entirely. _Enough_. It will be time to address it soon.  
  
But not tonight.  
  
“You're brooding.” She says it matter-of-factly to cover up other things – ridiculous, overblown things, sentimental like one of Cassandra's romances; _I have never met anyone like you_ – things she might want to say if she was brave or drunk enough.  
  
He gives a muffled groan, takes another swig of ale. “I'm not brooding.”  
  
“I _like_ brooding.”  
  
It doesn't sound convincing - she isn't certain it ought to be, if she's telling the truth – but she likes him, far too much and in more ways than she cares to count; it's the most genuine thing she feels these days when she's wrapping her doubt in words of faith and her fears in speeches of hope. Whatever it is between them is raw, full, _real_. When he looks at her like that, the way he does now, she wants his hands on her and her lips on his because he kisses her like she's something rare and beautiful, like she's _everything_. She wants the gentle restraint in his touch and the strength and weight of him, wants his arms around her and her legs wrapped tight, _tight_ over his back. For something they are yet to discover together she has a lot of visions in her head, always at the back of her mind as of late.  
  
He looks up, looks at her for a while.  
  
There's _change_ in him tonight, low in his voice, spinning slowly beneath his skin. Whenever she looks at him she can see it, how he becomes slightly altered each time as though he's no longer a fixed form if he ever was. Perhaps no one is. _History is merely people,_ her grandfather lectures in her memory. _And people are not easily narrated_.  
  
 _I'm no pampered Orlesian lady_ , she had told him the night before in this very tavern and something dark had crossed his features then, quick and harsh before it disappeared. _Sturdy Free Marcher right here. I survived the Conclave, I'm certain I will survive you._  
  
This pattern of loneliness; she wants to tear it apart.

  
  
  
\--  
  
  
“Let's get out of here,” she proposes when the second serving of ale has smoothed over her last edges of apprehension and made him talk – sparsely, of course, but _talk_ all the same.  
  
He merely nods at that, as though he's wasted all of his words.   
  
He kisses her - soft kisses on her mouth and her neck, deep kisses that make her forget her own name – as they enter the barn and she thinks about the place, thinks about her wide bed and comfortable blankets but she doesn't want to make a fuss and he really has the warmest hands in all of Thedas, gathering her closer against him as they shove the door shut behind them. Evelyn wraps her arms around his chest, urging him even closer as though there's no limit to her desire for him, no boundaries allowed to linger. One of her legs wedged between his, one of his hands cradling her hip and she leans in, searching for his gaze.  
  
He breaks them apart once more, but it's too late for regrets now and she tells him that, tells him things she can't even remember the second after she speaks them because of the way he looks at her when her hand roams over his stomach and then further down, her palm gently pressing down until he lets out a throaty groan, fingers digging into her back.  
  
  
–-  
  
  
  
He is nothing like the men she has fucked before, in darkness and shadows and spare rooms.  
  
“May I?” he asks when his fingers trace the hems of her tunic and slip underneath the linen to touch the scarred skin on her belly. There's heavy, intoxicating _want_ in his voice but no hurry in his movements and she draws a sharp breath, arching her back to aid him.  
  
“Please.”  
  
“Maker's breath,” he mumbles, running his hands over the body she has always felt the need to tame for the battlefield - its curves too generous, the lines not hard and flat enough for armour, for swords, for running and jumping and fighting. But it keeps her alive every day and she can see it now, reflected in his naked eyes, hear it at the bottom of his strained voice. “You'll be the death of me.”  
  
She undresses him too, not half as slowly because patience is not a virtue of hers and Blackwall smiles – wide, surprised, heartbreakingly _honest_ \- at her enthusiasm and she looks him into the eyes and kisses him like he is _everything_.  
  
And then the rhythm of them – wild, sated, slow – against the restless night outside.  
  
He is nothing like the men before him; this is nothing like _that_ and the novelty of it tastes of ale and fear and gut-wrenching release.  
  
  
\- -  
  
  
  
Afterwards, his body surrounding her and her feet tucked in between his calves as through they are already adjusting their shapes to fit each other. Her fingers creating patterns in the thick hair on his torso, patterns so fragile they fall with every breath she takes but reappear with the slightest touch. His hands caressing the scar on her face, the scar on her shoulder, the hidden scar under the swell of her breasts.  
  
“I love you,” she whispers drowsily to his chest, his shoulder, the warm skin on his neck because some things are endlessly, impossibly hard to say face to face. She's half-hoping he can't hear her words but as she looks up and sees the devastation in his gaze, she knows he has.  
  
“I... love you, too.” His voice is rough but soft, a humming beneath her ear and in the air above them and she closes her eyes and allows herself to drift off, entirely at peace. Before she slips fully into the Fade she thinks she can feel the press of his lips against her cheek and hear his voice again, gentler now and no more than a whisper: “I'm so _sorry_.”  
  
  


 


	9. Chapter 9

  
  
  
**dereliction  
** _ (noun) _   
  


  
Thom runs.   
  
A fat little coward: afraid of nightmares, of falling asleep, afraid of waking up to find Liddy dead beside him, afraid of the wordless, fathomless grief in his mother's face, afraid of the forest that hisses and swallows, afraid of blood on hands and knees, afraid of dogs barking in the night, afraid of older boys and their loud voices, afraid of older girls and their hard hands pulling and scraping, afraid of being caught, afraid of being nothing, afraid of fear itself and how it tightens his chest and twists his thoughts.   
  
He runs to get away from it but it follows.   
  
Thom runs, runs, runs.   
  
  
–--  
  
  
The stars are sharp above his head, like pale ink on the night sky.   
  
His body burns with other nights, other skies.   
  
Camps, _countless_ camps and fires warming frozen limbs back to life, camaraderie and competition in the air; heady, hazy nights after winning the tourney and the shallow, hollow admiration of the crowd; the warm cinnamon-flavoured wine in Ser Robert's sitting room, a handshake and a smile, reassuring and wide; a broken carriage on the side of the road and the quiet sky, watching; watching still as he's on his knees with his neck bared, stumbling over words that seem impossibly absurd in his mouth: _My Maker know my heart;_ rain and thunder drowning his tears – desperate, unfamiliar, bottomless – as he stands over Blackwall's corpse and cries for the first time since he was a little boy.   
  
A stolen night - so close that he can still taste it at the back of his tongue - in a stolen life and words that are entirely his own even if he will never speak them again. 

He rides – _runs, runs, runs_ – through this night, through the storm of memories and then finally wind and sun and air against his face; he looks up as he dismounts and sees the colourful, golden silhouette of Val Royeaux embrace him and he knows that this will be the end of all of his fears and all of his cowardice.

The end of him, _finally_.

  
  
  


* * *

 

  
  
  
**disgust**   
_(noun)_

  
  


Val Royeaux is, as always, crisply swaying skirts and a desirable abundance, forever a childhood dream for little lords and ladies growing up in the mud and grass of Ostwick where the Minanter catches your satin shoes and chills you to the bone. It's a thousand unnecessary absurdities: sumptuous gatherings, balls for every season, suppers with mountains of food that nobody eat, that aren't meant for eating, that are mere decoration made from dried sugar, gold leaf, animals and flowers coated in sapphires and satin. After the feast the remains are thrown out, flushed away with the nobility's shit and rendered useless to the commoners, the filth. It's an abundance made to taunt, to tease.   
  
Val Royeaux executes the unwanted right in the middle of all the splendour, a final punishment or an insult: _this does not belong to you._ She remembers Hangman's Hill, her own childish fascination with it and her grandfather's refusal to go with her, his reluctance to look at death as a spectator.   
  
Now she watches Captain Thom Rainier seal his fate and thinks of his blood colouring the white stone beneath her feet, wondering if she will have to watch it, how she will survive it.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
“You can see him tomorrow. Arrangement's been made.” Varric's voice is low; he stands close enough for it, close enough for his arm to reach across her back for support, had they been that sort of people.   
  
They aren't.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
“I like him, you know?” Sera raises an eyebrow and her goblet, looking at Evelyn over the table. They have found the only dark corner of the Belle Marché, entirely too much wine and no space to fall apart. “Not like you, though. Not like that, with hay up your... places. But I _like_ him. He fucked up, yeah?”  
  
“You could say that.”  
  
She sighs. “But he's not bad. Not _bad_ bad. I know bad.”  
  
Evelyn closes her eyes, wishing for the same certainty.   
  
  
\---  
  


 

“Are you going to faint?” Dorian stands behind her as she's taking a deep breath, steadying herself to leave the guest quarters.   
  
“Why are you asking? Want a chance to carry me gallantly through the marketplace?”   
  
He chuckles but there's no depth to it, his amusement only skin-deep. “You're a heavy woman, I don't think I'd make it.”  
  
She exhales, squares her shoulders, rubs her neck – a whole arsenal of grounding rituals under her fingertips and Dorian's hand on her arm, as serious as his teasing is light-hearted and she leans into him for a moment, hungry for human warmth in this cold, gilded place.

Around them the cathedral hums and soars with the Chant of Light, rising over the rooftops like a defiant prayer for a city that is already lost.  
  
  
  


 


	10. Chapter 10

  
**earn**   
_(verb)_

The walls in here stink of piss and bile.

The smells of death, someone told him once when he was much younger. It's no more dignified than that, what did you expect?

Had he hoped for dignity when he rode here? He can't remember, can't recall anything beyond making a decision one morning as he found out, through one of the spymaster's little friends, that Mornay was going to hang. It had been instinct more than honour. A surge through his body. Some primal, basic notion hammering in his head and then the resolve to listen to it, not merely brush it off and follow someone else's order instead, hide behind someone else's cover. _Your only talent, Thom._

Had he hoped for death? The knot in his stomach tells him _yes_ , tells him it's only right, tells him a hundred versions of the same story, over and over again. It's the story of four children that sang of mockingbirds as they were slaughtered. _No, Thom, they didn't sing, they screamed. They screamed for their lives._

"I didn't take Blackwall's life," he tells her - the Herald, the Inquisitor, _Evelyn_ \- when she stands outside his cell and he wishes he could blind her, that he could erase himself from her memory the way he could never erase Callier. The way he cannot rub out the stains of his existence from history. If that power had been granted him, he knows, he would not be here now. A fucking waste of life, same as he's always been. Fitting that he can't even die without wrecking something apart, without taking someone else with him as he falls.

Maker, you cruel bastard, did it have to be _her_?

She says nothing, merely stands there, proud and composed like a monument with all the unbridled edges he knows are there tightly contained within her body. Stray memories tell him that he had thought her clumsy when they first met, clumsy and awkward. It takes time, of course, to reshape yourself to fit your destiny and he understands it now when he's no longer entirely preoccupied with his own. Now he looks at her - momentarily, long enough for his heart to shatter - and sees only bright, brilliant grace. _You_ _idealise_ _me_ , she mutters in another stray memory, spitting blood and dirt from recent battle. _How_ _can_ _I_ _not?_ He had asked her that, but she had not understood what he meant back then.  
  
He wants to ask if she does now, wants to ask why she is here, wants to beg her to run and to _stay_ , wants to remember her smile under his hands when they hang him, wants them to hurry and get it over with, wants nothing but to end this, wants _nothing_.  
  
Some time later – hours, days, weeks, he no longer keeps track and no one is particularly willing to speak to him – a thin stream of a light is cast across the stones beneath his feet and there's a rustling sound as someone enters.  
  
“Thom Rainier.” The Commander's voice is cool, full of detached contempt that only briefly grazes the filthy surroundings down here. He's Fereldan, steeped in honour. “You will be released into our custody tomorrow at dawn. Inquisitor's orders.”  
  
Had he hoped for dignity? For death?  
  
He leans his forehead against the bars and closes his eyes.  
  
  


* * *

  
  


**ebb**  
 _(noun)_  
  
  
“So much pain.” Cole stands against the wall outside the entrance to the dungeons, his face invisible under the hat. She's become used to it by now, learned to read the expressions in his voice instead. “'It doesn't matter, none of it matters, why am I here?' He's tired. Of everything.”  
  
She takes a deep breath of the fresh night air.

“Does he want to die? Is that what you are saying?” Is there a slice of hopefulness in her voice?  
  
It would be simpler, perhaps. If one pain could outweigh another, if the banality in numbers – an eye for an eye, a life for a life - would restore what was lost. She might have believed that once, almost wishes she still did because once that comforting notion shatter you're left with the remains – raw, delicate, shivering pieces that don't _fit_.  
  
“No.” Cole shakes his head. “He wants to never have lived.”  
  
  
  
\--  
  
  
He is a map of devastation.  
  
The outlines of his body in the darkness of the dungeons at Skyhold like distinct borders, fading slightly here where everything is limitless, _ravenous_. At first he stands up straight, walks a few steps, then another few until they form a circle. She watches from the pitch-black corners by the stairs where nobody ever goes and the air still smells of dust and dampness.

His strength – even more visible now that she knows how much he has carried and for how long – like the mountains, a firm rocky spine across the south. He calms the rattling restlessness eventually and sits down on the floor, looking at the jagged surface of the walls and she can see his face, paler and thinner than she would like. It hasn't been long; it feels like a lifetime.  
  
The vast terrain of his history – battle-scarred plains and burnt grass, a scent of fire in the air – that lies beyond the northern border. The dead leave their shadows behind and he's shadow-drenched where he sits but she catches the shape of an old scar when he moves his arm to rub his neck, spots a fresh bruise on his arm and wonders how it got there, wishes that she had caused it.  
  
His heart like the river that runs through it all, wild and forceful, a mirror of her own. He looks up when he hears her approach and his _gaze_ then, confused and disbelieving; she doesn't say anything, can't find the words, can't bring herself to make an effort because all he is now is deflection and she's _furious_.  
  
He is a map of devastation, of a nation waging war on itself, troops burning everything in their path to inflict harm on each other. It's a war that cannot be won. It's a war that cannot be won because the terrain does not allow it, because the mountains will wear the fighting down, the river will quell the fires, the borders will _hold_ and she stands there on the other side of the bars and her fingers are around his suddenly, skin intertwined with steel.  
 _  
Maker help me I am here and I won't let you fall,_  she thinks, gaze travelling over fingertips and blunt nails, all the soft and calloused spots of their hands. _Put your weapon down._  


 


	11. Chapter 11

  
**eclipse**  
 _(noun)_  
  
  
Judging by the way people look at him he ought to be grateful. Side-way glances, half-turned heads, low-pitched voices that carry truths and lies across the room, later probably in letters across the seas because that's the way the higher classes live and breathe. It's the sound of masks and dresses, whispers like hissing snakes coiling around the Inquisitor's throne. Pampered, powdered dogs on display, always ready to bite down on each other's pulsating throats, conquer and be conquered.  
  
Nothing brings the nobility together like finding a common enemy, a visible enemy that can offer a moment's respite from the constant vigilance against assassins and conspirators.  
  
Every step he takes, the chains rattle.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
Sometimes, he learns as Lady Josephine announces the arrival of the prisoner, the wound lies not in the infliction but in the expectations.  
  
He had expected to hang.  
  
The spaces between his ribs burn with repressed fury, with emotions he can barely master now that he has no false pretences to shield him. Without Blackwall everything he couldn't outrun loom into focus. He's Thom Rainier with chains clawing at his wrists and he knows the moment he meets Evelyn's gaze that he will have to learn how to be that man again. It worries him, _angers_ him, to think about the influence and manipulation used to get him here in the first place and how it has darkened the Inquisition's effort. A leader is no leader without the approval of her subjects. Such a leader leaves nothing but a broken order behind; he can't bear the thought of being a poison, of forging chaos to the foundation they've built over the past year.  
  
His head hurts with the realisation – gradually, then all at once – that it's not corruption but _reality_ , the one thing he prides himself in seeing and honouring.  
  
The hollow places inside his chest ache with the way she regards him from her throne, the way she had looked at him in that hazy notion – the dream or nightmare or fucking _mirage,_ he can't tell which - he has of her in the dungeons. The hollow places that ache, too, from no longer being empty, from threatening to burst out of their own constrictions. The only thing that has ever been good, _right_ , and he must destroy that along with everything else.  
  
 _This isn't your storm_ , he wants to tell her. _This isn't your life. My crimes are not yours to set right.  
_  
“You could have _left_ me there,” he manages. A shadow crosses her face then, makes her mouth twitch and he realises the anger is slipping away from him, becomes misdirected and grotesque. That helpless hitch in his voice, how he cannot seem to rein it in. “I was ready to accept my punishment. I was ready for all this to _end_. Why would you stop it?” He inhales. “What becomes of me now?”  
  
His mind has tried and rejected endless explanations and theories since the Commander had informed him about the change of plans back in Val Royeaux. He's wondered about her reasoning and her plans, has occasionally even dared to wonder about her heart though he can't imagine that she feels anything beyond disappointment. Does she want revenge? She doesn't seem the type though part of him wishes she were. He knows how to deal with that.  
  
“You have your freedom.”  
  
Nothing has prepared him for this, he realises that as her words fill the room, louder than the mumbling nobles and their endless gossip. He almost staggers, shifts position and shakes his head slightly, as though he'd be able to shake off the strangeness of it all.  
  
“It _cannot_ be that simple.”  
  
“It's not,” she says quickly.  
  
\--–  
  
  
There's no question in his mind about what he intends to do with the life she spares. It's the rest of it that he's struggling to make sense of.  
  
He had never counted on it, would hardly be able to imagine _anything_ like her appearing along the way. Hadn't counted on how utterly it would disarm him, how it would tear and wreck and cut into everything he thinks about himself and the sort of man he wants to be as though she sees through everything, challenge every comfortable prejudice and ideal in his bones. He has very few romantic notions left but he pours everything that's left of it, of him, into this very moment.  
  
“It will take time. You would accept that? And what I used to be?” He pauses, takes a step towards her. What they have has been nothing but a string of stolen moments outside of time and place; it has been _everything_ and at the prospect of losing it altogether he has to brace himself again. “I lied about who I was, but I never lied about what I felt. No matter what I was or what becomes of me, right now I am just a man with his heart laid bare. I leave it in your hands.”  
  
 _Well, you never found a proper use for it anyway, Rainier._  
  
The crowd's collective murmur rises and falls – _did he just? The nerve! Maker's breath- Lord Trevelyan will have a fit when he hears this! -_ and he knows, because he's no fool, that everything he does not goes against all decorum, all common sense, everything he has spent so many years of his life learning how to master.  
  
He does it anyway and there's a light in her eyes, flickering behind the calm glance and her hands that rest firmly at her sides. _Try me_ , she had told him once, almost angrily, when he evaded yet another question.  
  
 _Come on then, Lady Trevelyan,_ he thinks. _This is who I am. I'm not above sentimental shit, I have no pride left to lose and I love you far more than I have ever loved myself.  
_  
Keeping her gaze locked with his she gets to her feet and takes a step towards him. Then another one. The gossips and shrieking vultures are quiet, waiting with bathed breath for another scandal, he supposes. A flash of harsh, sudden guilt as he thinks about her reputation, a regret to add to the pile.  
  
There's no reason for her to forgive him. He doesn't expect her to. If he's honest there's a part of him that wishes she wouldn't. And then she _does_ and his voice is gone for several seconds.  
  
“I... don't know how to be with you as Thom Rainier.”  
  
Her voice is clear, _loud_ but he can't remember her words – or hear them over the sound his own blood makes in his head – can't remember anything beyond the slant of her open mouth and the curve of her broad shoulders as she takes another step and he meets her, chains and all.  
  
  
\----  
  
  
Judging by the way they speak of him in the tavern and in the courtyard, he ought to have been flogged to death, his corpse dragged through the streets of Val Royeaux. _I'd have demanded his head_ , one woman offers. _It would look better on a pike_. He walks quickly, wanting to shake off all the time spent in cells and escape the voices at that, but catches the general opinion well enough.  
  
It's nothing strange, nothing he had not known would happen.  
  
It's the discussions that magically stills whenever he approaches, the heads that turn and the gazes that wander, seeking every visible fraction in his armour. Even the soldier recruits down by the stables pause their bickering to watch him walk into his old quarters.  
  
It's the unexpected scent of mace and saffron, the rich flavour of butter and salt filling his nostrils and Evelyn stands in the dimly lit loft with a plate of food that first evening after his return. He spots salmon and cheese, some sort of stew and his stomach does a desperate twist, reminding him that he hasn't eaten since they removed the chains.  
  
“I thought you might have seen enough of the keep for today,” she says. Her face is obscured by the dusk, but her voice is soft, neutral. “Saved you some supper.”  
  
“Thank you.” He takes the plate; she doesn't remove her hand immediately and for a short while his fingers remain interlaced with hers around the edges of the neatly cut fish and cheese. “Will you join me?”  
  
She shakes her head and takes a step back, her hand gone now.  
  
“I have a lot of unfinished work,” she says, voice still soft but he can see the broken smile behind the composure now as she is about to leave, can see the cost of it all on her skin, in her eyes. “Perhaps tomorrow.”

 


	12. Chapter 12

_  
  
_  
**elapse**  
 _(verb)_  
  
  
It begins in Haven:  
  
  
She spends several mornings - when the light is just right or good enough - at the blacksmith by the stables, asking questions until she's outstayed her welcome. _No offence, my lady, but I have work to do._ Blackwall watches. Sometimes he joins in, offers an opinion or a question of his own. Sometimes he waits for her a few steps away, waits with a half-smile and a long glance. _You ask a lot of questions, my lady._ She returns the smile – not easily at first, not certain she wants him to matter, not certain if he ever could but as the days pile up around them and their stances soften, everything else becomes muddled, _gentle_.  
  
  
\--  
  
As their effort grows her workload increases and he can find her in a disorganised heap of reports and letters as soon as they set up camp for the night. A scent of ink and frustration, her back bent and her fingers scratching the nape of her neck where dark strands of hair form interesting patterns. He's been around enough dirt poor and undereducated commoners in the army to know the signs but it's not until he catches the Inquisitor frowning over a requisition order in Redcliffe that the scene strikes at something in his memory. He never asks. That evening he offers to read the reports to her - _more efficient this way, my lady -_ while she takes care of her kit and there's a moment, shivering unsteady between them, before she nods curtly.  
  
  
\--  
  
The Hinterlands have been struck hard by the rebelling fractions and she is intent on _helping_ , not merely to raise support. Blackwall's always the one to ask whenever she needs company to aid a farmer with a half-ruined roof or to initiate a search for missing healers for the refugees. He doesn't protest, doesn't complain about time wasted. They work well together, side by side, but she can't help but notice the unspoken questions in his mouth, the way his gaze circles around her when she stands elbow-deep in mud and rain-soaked ashes. The shape of his voice – equal parts contempt and what almost sounds like servility – whenever he speaks of _the nobles_ as though they are all the same. A grey mass of people wearing the same face. Perhaps they are; she feels far removed from it herself after years of exile. Years of walking away from it, of sparring, sharpening, bruising her body into a different mould to fit a different life.  
  
“Do not make assumptions about me, Warden Blackwall,” she tells him as they chase down bandits along the outskirts of Redcliffe.  
  
She doesn't tell him it's because everyone already does or because he, of all people, ought to ask her questions instead. She doesn't tell him she would answer but when they return to Haven he asks what Ostwick was like and there's a shift in his tone that lands happy and warm in her chest.  
  
  
\-- _  
  
“_ You need to surprise me, he grunts at her across the training ground, holding his sword ready for her next attack. “Forget your templar training, don't be lazy now.”  
  
She wipes her face with her arm, hands still holding the greatsword she uses for practice and he can spot an irritated frown that tells him she'll give him everything she has in her next move. Her skills with the blade are significant if a little too easy to predict and he's a captain again when they spar like this, wants to run her through slightly improved methods, refine her stance and-  
  
“ _Surprise_ ,” she mutters as her blow shoves him into the cold ground, sword and body and a focus made of stony determination and years of training. He has to chuckle even if there will be bruises along his ribs for days.  
 _  
  
\--  
  
_ They pass each other on the way to and from the chantry, surprisingly often. _Are you a man of faith?_ she asks on one of those occasions and she can see all the different answers fluttering about underneath his skin. _I don't think I've decided yet,_ is the one he chooses and she falls a little bit in love with how she wants to hear the rest.  
  
  
\--  
  
She is often down by the water when night has fallen, skirting round the deep-blue lake with no visible purpose but he knows it's there in her steps. Shedding the burden of what they do, catching her breath, facing the sky here where nobody is watching her. He doesn't approach; more often than not she calls out for him as he is leaving.  
  
“Do you like to fish, my lady?” He asks her this once and she grins at him for several beats before he remembers her upbringing.  
  
When she speaks her voice is suggestive and familiar, like a promise. “Perhaps one day you can show me.”  
  
  
  
*

  
  
It begins at Skyhold:  
  
  
The old castle is a maze and at the heart of it lies the kitchen, the great belly of the keep. There are the hands that feed them all, the scullions that clean the oily, sooty stone, sweeping the way for the maids and the servants. And head cook Donatien who's never around when Thom peeks in through the kitchen entrance near the stables. He runs into Evelyn there more often than he sees the cook, especially the first shivering days after the trial when Thom finds himself sneaking around the grounds like a fucking mongrel. As if he could ever outrun the Inquisitor.  
  
“You don't have to avoid the rest of us, Thom.” She lets her gaze wander over the carelessly stocked cheese on the shelves, the scattered fruit on one of the tables.  
  
“I know that.”  
  
It is merely, he thinks but doesn't say, that his cursed bloody name in her mouth leaves him with a sense of dread that he can't shake off.  
  
\--  
  
  
She watches him from the stairs leading up to the kitchens sometimes. It's a fairly obscured little spot of the grounds that she treasures, not much used by either servants or soldiers and it lets her sit in peace, sorting through her head or sharpening her blades.  
  
Like her, Blackwall – _Thom_ – has a solitary nature. His thoughts and his feelings travel inwards, tucked away safely in his body where most can't ever spot them. There's power in being one who can, she thinks as he pats one of the horses on its head, or gives them water from the well. Power in taking apart something so composed. Power, too, in finding emotions that are not freely given away, not generously offered to everyone. Back in Haven she had thought it odd that he possessed a self-contained person's sharp readings of others but that they had seemed grim and hard-earned, almost unwilling, as though he would have preferred not to know.  
  
She no longer finds it odd; she wishes, some days, that she did.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
It's a good night in Skyhold's tavern, a _light_ sort of night and they take their victories where they can find them these days, raise their voices and their tankards. Beside him Evelyn is tipsy – her cheeks flushed and her posture's loose, her shoulder bumping into his arm from time to time – and there's something madly irresistible about her in that state. She's telling Sera a fast-paced, deliciously filthy story involving templar recruits and a highly questionable use of shields and Thom drinks deep and fast. He catches Sera's gaze and her wide grin as Evelyn finishes the story and returns her attention to the wine.  
  
“You don't act like nobles, Heraldness.”  
  
“You must not know many nobles, then.”  
  
“Pfft.” The elf giggles, leaning forward to grab her beer with both hands. Definitely a lot more than tipsy, that one. “They're all rubbish, yeah? I mean, we're all rubbish. Dirty, greedy little... shits. But the rich tits they're all skirts and masks, covering it up. _You_ don't hide.”  
  
Thom grins into his tankard, grateful as always for Sera. “And that was a compliment, my lady. Somewhere in there.”  
  
Evelyn laughs, relaxed and warm by his side, her eyes glittering, and when she places a hand on his leg he lets his arm rest around her back, and for a little while their lives are no more complicated than that.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
 **elegy**  
 _(noun)_  
  
  
The squares and slices of sky reaching into the stables are pale and clash against the flames in front of him. In his palm the torn-off badge gleams like gold.  
  
“I was thinking I ought to send this back. To the Wardens,” he says quietly.  
  
Behind him he can hear shuffling of feet before her scent - spices and leather and weapons – mingles with the burning wood.  
  
“I don't think there's anyone left to send it to.” Evelyn sits down, legs crossed, feet tucked under the knees like she's not a woman of imposing size.  
  
“Perhaps not.”  
  
He looks down at the badge again, follows the shape of the proud griffon and remembers the man who wore it. Rainy days, camps that were tormented by wind and wild animals and that strange, almost thrilling sensation of moving towards something for the first time in years; Blackwall had not flinched for a second as Thom confessed his crimes one night. _You will be in good company then._ It had not been a remark he had wanted to remember, had not been what he needed then but now it tastes differently, the words spreading a dark sort of comfort.   
  
The badge still gleams as he throws it into the fire. Stupid thing to do since it won't burn but there's something to be said for gestures, too, he supposes.  
  
Evelyn says nothing but she puts her hand on his back, over his shoulder blade; she holds it there, perfectly still. Thom turns towards her. She looks at him, serious and quiet and she lets her her hand remain on his back as though she wants to take something from him and give him something in return.

They remain like that for a while, warmth and darkness filling their gazes and their lungs.

  
  


 


	13. Chapter 13

  
  
**entwine  
** _(verb)_  
  
  
The Dales greet them again with sunlight and brittle summer rain across the ancient graves.  
  
It seems they will be here forever, ensnared in a turmoil of Freemen and wildlife and old superstition and Evelyn bites down on a curse as a pack of wolves announce their presence deeper into the forest. One step too far and you have an animal aiming for your throat. Not to mention these trees with their large and obstructive roots everywhere, as though nature itself tries to keep them out.  
  
“It is said that each tree here is a reminder of a life lost during the Exalted March.” Cassandra uses her sword to cut off a few branches that block their path.  
  
Sera makes a dismissive sound behind them but whatever remark she makes is lost in the noise of a small group of Dalish soldiers passing.  
  
A few steps further behind Thom walks, carrying the bulk of their equipment without saying much at all.  
  
  
  
\--–  
  
  
  
“Cassandra-”  
  
“ _Seeker_ Cassandra, if you must address me.” The voice is like a dagger cutting the air around it to shreds. Evelyn remembers it from Haven, directed at her, at the chaos and deaths and at the Seeker herself, though she isn't certain everyone understands that. “But I would rather you did not address me at all.”  
  
When she looks at them over her shoulder Cassandra's mouth is a thin, hard line and Thom shakes his head, mostly to himself.  
  
  
  
\---  
  
  
  
Their first day in the Emerald Graves may have been almost entirely unproductive but it's warm around the fire and their camp near a glen smells of freshly made food – roasted pork with a thick, spicy sort of broth Evelyn once had mentioned in passing that she really liked and gets served regularly now.  
  
“We will find this Fairbanks tomorrow,” she says, curling her hands around the bowl. “From what I gather through the reports, I think he will be willing to aid us.”  
  
Vivienne sits opposite her on a makeshift chair made out of stone and wood that fits her like a throne, her shoulders as straight as always, her neck proud. Evelyn's mother would _simply_ _adore_ the first enchanter; she smiles faintly at the thought.  
  
“I do wish the Inquisition would consider employing proper chevaliers instead, my dear. Not merely rebels and... lowlife _thugs_.”  
  
“ _Vivienne_ -” Her voice now, Evelyn thinks briefly and with a sense of dread. Never before has it sounded more like Lady Trevelyan of Ostwick, wife of Bann Trevelyan and mother of two successful children and one Herald of Andraste – a cold tone to hide the subtly frayed edges as Evelyn and Anne were tormenting each other out of sight somewhere, screaming so loud the entire estate would drown in it. A composed rage, always in control, all the angry threads reined in. _Do apologize to your sister, Evelyn._  
  
Beside her Thom puts down his bowl on a stone, creating a dull sound. “Madame Vivienne, I know you're trying to pretend I'm furniture but I'm still a person. With _ears_.”  
  
“Oh, so you do recognise it.”  
  
“Recognise _what_?”  
  
“That will be enough, thank you.” Evelyn stands up and looks at Vivienne, almost able to taste her next scathing remark before it's spoken and it's _enough_ , all of it.  
  
  
  
\---  
  
  
  
His shadow falls heavy and wide on the fallen trees by the tents where she finds him alone, going through his pack. She spots a whetstone, a repair kit for his armour and a few knives; when she approaches he looks up, a slight smile visible beneath the beard before he returns to his work.  
  
Once she thought she fell in love with him in Redcliffe, fell in love as they were running from a nightmare so vivid it had trembled inside her for months afterwards, had made her hands shake as she held her sword. They ran and she had tripped and Thom – _Blackwall_ , back then he was Blackwall - had been there, instinctively pulling her back to her feet and she had allowed herself to rest in his touch for much longer than necessary, his hands like warm whispers on her body.  
  
Now she knows that she really falls in love with him in a camp in the Emerald Graves where hardly anybody wants him because he has been stripped of his delusions and has, in turn, torn apart theirs.  
  
Nothing is simple between them any more – can't be, shouldn't be – and perhaps it will remain like that, unspoken and untouched.  
  
Even so, she _knows_.  
  
  
  
–--  
  
  
  
There's still enough daylight left for most of them to carry on with their duties and down by the small river Iron Bull and a few footsoldiers he seems to get along well with clean up their weapons and armour. Rivulets of blood in the pale water, disappearing out of sight.  
  
“Bull?”  
  
The qunari doesn't take his eyes off the greataxe he's rubbing clear off its last visible bloodstains. “Hey, boss.”  
  
“I want you and Blackwall for the first shift tonight. Patrol the east road first.”  
  
He nods. “Got it.”  
  
“And Bull?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
She stifles her own ridiculous impulse to coddle before she has even allowed a proper thought to form. What would she ask of him, anyway? _Be kind to Captain Thom Rainier, veteran butcher in the Orlesian army._  
  
“Watch out for the wolves,” she says instead. It's been a running joke between them ever since Iron Bull accidentally came out of a fight wearing a black wolf on his left horn and he laughs, looking up at her with a wide grin.  
  
Later, when she's gone over the maps and preparations for tomorrow with Cassandra, she spots him alongside Thom by the fire. He's using his hands to tell some ludicrous story, laughing at his own jokes and after shaking his head Thom laughs, too.  
  
Evelyn smiles as she hits her bedroll. For all his thick-headed, thick-skinned brawn, she knew she could trust the Ben-Hassrath to pick up on the unspoken orders.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
 **essence**  
(noun)  
  
  
  
“Don't you ever sleep?” Thom glares at Cole across the fire, wondering how it's possible that someone who is so skilled at reading people's emotions can't fathom concepts like boundaries or self-imposed solitude.  
  
“You're very loud,” the boy answers, taking a few steps closer. He doesn't have to explain what he means – sitting down and looking at a fire is not exactly a noisy activity – but Thom has a feeling he will, all the same. “Since you came back.”  
  
“Am I now?” He rubs his temples where there's been a hammering ache for a couple of days now. The boy takes a seat opposite him; in the red and yellow light from the fire his face resembles the demon he claims he isn't.  
  
“They wanted Blackwall, not Rainier. That's why they're angry.”  
  
“Care to tear into me as well, now that you know?” He despises that wounded _hitch_ in his own voice but it's clawed itself into his composure and refuses to leave, like a fucking ghost in his body.  
  
Cole shakes his head. “You never hid from me.”  
  
And Thom closes his eyes, bracing himself for the memory he knows is there, that will be in the spirit's mouth and when he hears it spoken it makes him sick to his stomach. The fortnight that has passed since he was pardoned has been a stretched-out moment just like this one, an endless memory spelled out for everyone to hear. His guilt tastes of shame and his shame has claws, digging into everything else.  
  
“She's hurting now, because of you.” Of course the spirit of sodding compassion has to have an earnest voice, too, as though he's a child who has never met a foolish coward before, as though everything presented to him is _new_. It makes the weight of your crimes feel even heavier. “So many doubts.”  
  
“Don't poke around in her head!” Thom interrupts, quickly, before his greed has overpowered his decency or whatever it is that makes him appalled at the idea of Evelyn's thoughts being taken from her and spread out before him.  
  
“I already did.” There's no trace of regret in his words. “She's loud, too. She would not have been with you if she knew. She's hurt because you made her not choose. You stole that. I can't fix it. I'm _sorry_.”  
  
Thom closes his eyes again, feeling his face burn with the heat from the fire and the boy's eyes alike.  
  
“I...” he glares into the flames, reaching for the flask on the ground and wishing with a strength that burns in his throat that it would contain something stronger than water. “It's not _your_ fault, Cole.”

 


	14. Chapter 14

**estimate  
** ( _verb_ )

 

The estate in the middle of the forest is like an extravagant painting in blue and red, with streaks of gold thrown in for good measure. Even though it's fallen into disrepair it stands out, would stand out among most places in the Marches. There's something extravagant about the location, too, as though the estate's owner had wanted to prove something by building his home here where people fear to thread. Emerald Graves, harbouring dangerous animals, elven mysteries and well-off Orlesians looking for a stupidly exotic place for their summer homes. It's fitting somehow.  
  
Evelyn drags her fingers along one of the walls – crimson red - almost expecting the colour to soak her skin. _The Orlesians know the purpose of art_ , her mother would say, voice taut with admiration. _Once more from the top - mind your accent, my dear._ The Trevelyan estate is full of proof of Lady Trevelyan's passions and ambitions but nothing fully compares to the sheer luxury of an Orlesian mansion.  
  
“How did you live?” she asks suddenly, glancing at Thom by her side. They're having a moment of rest while Dorian and Vivienne study a few strange wards in one of the abandoned rooms and – in Dorian's case – investigate the library. “In Orlais, I mean.”  
  
She half expects him to scoff at her question – _nothing like this, my lady_ – or avoid it altogether but instead he looks at her with an unreadable expression on his face.  
  
“Orlais has plenty of garrisons and guardhouses.”  
  
 _But_ _you_ _were_ _a_ _captain_ , she protests wordlessly and frowns, trying to shuffle her notions and facts about him in her head so they form a pattern that makes sense to her. Of course, she can't escape the thought that he _does_ make sense, only not to _her_ because she's never met someone like him before. There's greed in that, in wanting him to fit into her world and she realises as she looks at him now, across an unfamiliar room in unfamiliar lands, that _this_ is how it must be instead.  
  
Thom picks up a bust of a stern-looking man from a table nearby and glares at it for a moment before putting it down again among numerous trinkets and jewellery. All of it is so carelessly thrown around, like it means nothing ad she can hear Sera rage about it in a recent memory, looting another abandoned house. _Bloody rich tits don't even care about their rubbish. They don't deserve it._

She takes a seat in a large armchair and crosses her legs.  
  
He walks up to another table by the wide-open entrance and lets his hands travel over the assorted parchments and books there. Evelyn observes him in silence for a moment. There's something oddly _touching_ about the way he casually lines up all the tomes and papers, corner against corner, edge against edge.  
  
Touching, perhaps, because he has hands made for other things than paperwork and desks, has big, broad calloused hands – but a gentle touch, she remembers, sucking in her bottom lip, such a _painfully_ gentle touch and a controlled strength and a mouth full of secrets and--.  
  
Touching, perhaps, because he is making an attempt at creating order in a broken mess.

“I never meant to lie to you.” He says it softly, keeping his voice low. “I tried to tell you the truth. But it was simpler to lie. I wanted to be someone else, Maker knows how much I wanted it. The kind of man you deserve. ”

Outside she spots the mages, standing shoulder to shoulder; when the birds cease to chirp and the other sounds of nature come to a brief halt, she can hear them discuss something but cannot make out what.

"I know." She leans forward in her seat, palms pressed flat against her knees. It strikes her that her armour is filthy but it's been many years since she cared about keeping furniture clean. One of those small things that reminds her how much of her that she has washed out, turned away from. Is anyone the same as when they started out? Is that even the point, the Maker's will? “And I want to choose for myself what kind of man that might be.”

“Thom Rainier...” he speaks the name with disgust, ever that _disgust_ that creeps into every letter, folds itself around every syllable. “I don't think I even knew who he was. Who _I_ was.”

“According to what I've read about you, you were a fine captain to your soldiers.”

“Until I sold them out for gold, you mean?” There's nothing left of the burning accusation from his trial, nothing left of the frustration and fury that had twisted his face. Now he speaks merely with a fathomless sort of exhaustion that worries her. Anger is red-hot _life_ , even if it's aimed at yourself; tired bitterness breeds only death.

Evelyn rises to her feet, noting she has left a trail of blood stains on both the carpet and the green silk fabric of the armchair. Blood and mud and steel, the scent of the Inquisition regardless of how hotly Josephine might wish the associated words were more along the line of spices, ink and diplomatic agreements in a candle-lit hall. _Everyone will know the Inquisition is corrupt_ but he had known that already, if he had dared to look close enough.

“One deed cannot drown hundreds, Thom.” She tries to make her own voice kind around his name, tries to make him sound like someone worth having while she makes up her mind about it. “Whatever good you did is still there, too.”

“I'm not so certain it is. Or should be.” He meets her gaze now, eyes searching for something to hold on to.  
  
“I am.”

She is uncertain of a lot of things – _increasingly_ less certain since they placed a sword in her hand in front of people that had followed her through despair and made her entire world a shade of grey with no room for black or white – but she knows that.  
  
Thom shakes his head.  
  
It hurts to love with your eyes open, with the masks torn off and the hearts laid bare. It _hurts_. There is nothing simple or light-hearted about it, nothing akin to the sentimental ballads or the far-fetched romance stories. _The human heart is not created to_ _please_ , her grandfather says in her memory, his voice a shiver of light in the reading room. It's a muscle: raw and strong and enduring enough to pull you through the darkest of times. It's what ties us together, what keeps us whole. 

In the end it's not much more than blood and bones and skin and hearts, beating defiantly beneath a thousand romantic notions of knightly honour and purity of souls.

In the end he stands in the middle of an abandoned estate in a land torn by war, raking a hand through his hair as he struggles to find words. 

In the end is love and it's _there_ and demands to be given a direction.

"I don't know how to be with you as Thom Rainier," he says, like an echo. Days and weeks have passed yet they still stand here, holding each other up against invisible scales. What is the price of him, of her, of _them_? Who passes judgement, who balances the weights? _He played us for fools_ , Cassandra spits in her memory, her sharp features hard and angry.

"Why?"

“Because he – _I_ \- would never have caught the eye of someone like you.” And there's something to be said about the way his voice alters, the way the lines in his face seem to switch places, his shadow morphing on the ground. He is not becoming someone else, she realises, he has been the same man all along but now he's shedding the masks bit by bit, day by day and it sends a a thrill and a shiver through her body, as though she cannot make up her mind whether or not it excites her or terrifies her.  
  
 _I've never met a woman like you before_ , he had told her once and it had felt like being measured against a long, narrow road of _history_ ; it had felt vaguely like she was surpassing some unfair notion and that idea had felt like pinpricks on her patience. Now she wonders again what those words had meant, to him.  
  
A thousand questions in her body when they circle around these matters but she presses them down because now is rarely the time and they are both private people intent on professional actions and giving the gossip mongers as little as possible. And still. _Still_. She wants to learn about the ones before her, wants to learn about people he has loved, people he has hated, every person in his life that has shaped it, created the man that stands in front of her now, frowning at her smile. She wants, wants, wants.  
  
She closes the distance between them, her hands on his arms for a heartbeat and she would kiss him now, but they haven't kissed since his trial, have barely touched. It still seems distant even if the motion lingers in her, hammering in her fingertips and her mouth, whispers hoarse and enticing at the bottom of her thoughts.  
  
She doesn't kiss him.

“You did catch my eye,” she says instead. “There is very little you can do about _that_.”

And then she walks away, out into the sunlight. She doesn't turn around, doesn't dare to look, but she hopes that he smiles, too.  


  
  


* * *

 

 **exhumation**  
( _noun_ )

 

“I had a sister,” he tells her under lush trees, picking leaves and coagulated blood from his hair. “Liddy. She got sick. Died when I was ten.”

“My father gambled,” he says as they gather wood for the fire. Her hands curl around the axe as she listens, never looking up. “Lost the house one night at the tavern. I left Markham five days later.”

“I was jealous of the chevaliers and the lords in Orlais,” he admits behind the flickering flames of their campfire. They have hunted Freeman all day; his confession seems fitting among these wretched misled deserters. “I despised them but I was jealous. Like a starved bloody kid.”  
  
“After we had killed Callier and his family, I travelled back to Val Royeaux,” he tells her shadow that's vaguely visible. It swallows his own where they sit. “Reported to my superior like a good soldier. Like they were just another mission. I even believed it for a while, until the truth came to light.”  
  
She looks at him then, her eyes wide and bottomless and he no longer knows if he speaks to show her the man he is or to drive her away, finally.

 

 


	15. Chapter 15

 

 **fabled  
** ( _adj_ )

 

The first dragon they kill is mostly an accident.

It's a step too far on a dangerous path in a remote region of the Hinterlands and all of a sudden Sera's arrow misses the bear and hits a dragonling and then it's a turmoil of fire and smoke and the smell of steel being tempered in flames. Dorian casts frost spells until he's shivering from the mana loss and Evelyn sinks her sword into the dragon's side as it draws it last, flaming breath; Blackwall is beside her before she falls, holding her up as she slings one arm around his neck and breathes fire, too.

They stagger to the closest stream then, scorched and aching. Between the four of them there's enough dragon blood to colour the water red as death and Evelyn blinks as she watches her own hands shake around the potion Dorian presses into them.

She's worse off than she likes to admit, than she ought to admit as the leader of them all but when they're dragging behind the rest of the group with the camp in sight she allows Blackwall to wrap his arm around her waist and take the last steps for them both.

 

\--

 

The second time it's a plan, a purpose.

Then Iron Bull's childish enthusiasm renders it an adventure, shakes some much-needed joy into their group as they set out from Watcher's Reach, their backs straightened by a good night's sleep and a solid breakfast. _Take your comforts where you find them_ , Evelyn tells herself and glances at Thom who walks in front, by the Bull, comparing notes on weapon materials. Beside her Sera mutters something about poisoning her arrows.

 _Take your comforts where you find them_ , she tells herself again when they've bathed and rested and scrubbed dragon scales from every hidden spot on their bodies and the tankard in front of her seems like a good idea after all.  
  
Bull raves about raw power and blood, bringing order in the chaos and Evelyn drinks because a person can have too much order in her life and there's something _there_ in the way the dragon had died, something unsettled and swirling at the pit of her stomach. _Power_. She drinks and chokes, shaking her head when tears well up but she keeps going. There's power in killing and she is definitely not certain it ought to be a thrill, definitely not comfortable with the tickling, rising sensation along her spine as she thinks about it.  
  
The second drink takes all those edges away. The third makes her want to laugh and dance and never stop.

“Furrows, come _on_.” One of Bull's massive hands lands on Thom's shoulder and Evelyn chuckles into the remains of her drink at the nickname. “Just one.”

"Not going to happen. I've tried that once." He nods at Bull's drink and takes another swig of his own. "Ended up half-naked on a fucking ship to Nevarra."  
  
“Aw, coward,” Sera teases fondly and Thom grins at her.

Thom grins at Evelyn, too, later in the dark as he helps her back to her bedroll among the shadows and soldiers. The night here smells of sweet flowers and grass, so unlike the nights at Skyhold that always carry a note of frost, a change of season as opposed to this unending summer. He's misplaced here, she thinks, her mind like a maze of odd, jumbled ideas tonight. He was made for autumn, winter. She has her arm across his back and he has slung his around her shoulder and when her balance slips away from her she leans closer, her head against his chest.  
  
“Here we are,” Thom says as they've reached the right corner of the camp; his feet stop moving. Through his shirt she can hear his heart beat, feel the rise and fall of every breath and suddenly she doesn't want to let go because he is warm and big and strong and _he lied to you_ though it fades, Maker knows it fades and in its wake there is room for other things, things far more exquisite and spacious than than hurt and pride. The slice of her mind that is drowning in Iron Bull's disgustingly intoxicating brew wants her to turn slightly now, wants her to slide her hands under the hem of his shirt, slip her mouth against the hollow of his throat and drag her fingernails along his back, stumble on the hard muscles and soft flesh until he groans impossible things – _I love you_ \- in her ear, against her lips, into her hair.  
  
She makes a whimpering sound – unintentional, her body betraying her – and shifts, throwing her free arm around him as well, trapping him in an embrace. _Stay_ she commands him silently. _Don't leave_ , her hands on his back spell out - once, twice, stubbornly.

And Thom Rainier is a bastard but he's not _that_ kind of bastard; his hand is chaste at the back of her head, a warmth against her hair, her scalp. His other hand rests heavy between her shoulder blade, his thumb stroking softly around fresh wounds and forgotten ones, all the criss-cross patterns on her body that he had traced not too long ago. There had been no chastity between them then and no hesitation, merely bodies, sturdy warrior bodies made to clash and to yield. If she closes her eyes she can still feel his fingertips along every marking, his tongue hot and wet at the long thread of history on her skin. She can feel her own exploration of him as well, like an echo or a dream and it falls inside her now, falls with a thud on the ground. The tip of her nose against his neck - warm, salt skin and the lingering scent of bathing oils in his beard - and he exhales, inhales, his hand still cradling her head.

They stand like that for a long while, motionless like statues, as though they're both afraid every move will upset a much larger balance than just their own.  
  
“Sleep well,” Thom mumbles as he leaves, pressing a kiss to her forehead.  
  
She will not remember this in the morning.

  


* * *

  


 

 **fine-tune  
** ( _verb_ )

 

The way he tends to his shield and his weapon - _her_ weapon too, if she allows him - with carefully chosen whetstone, leathers that she knows he examines thoroughly for rough patches or a hidden sharpness, oils that he inspects and weighs in his hands like treasures, or traps.

The way she studies the maps of areas they are travelling to, a strained frown on her face and teeth digging into her lower lip – she's insatiable, wants to learn everything, _understand_ everything - and it makes something in his chest click, as though it breaks or the pieces finally fall into place.

The ridiculous way in which she styles her hair ever since she notices that he watches her as she lets it out in camp, his eyes full of a strange sort of reverence that's _peculiar_ but not unwelcome and she picks up the habit of braiding parts of her hair, if only for the fact that it takes longer to undo it then, takes an enternity to let the strands fall out of their refinements and fall together in waves and curls down to her shoulders. 

The way she walks closer to him than she does to anyone else, so near at times that her shoulder touches his as they trek up hills or down into valleys; it seems intentional, _protective_ and he wonders sometimes if it's for her safety or his.

The way she arranges and rearranges the shifts and duties until hers match his. She had done that in the beginning, when everything needed time and place to grow between them and she was hungry for his company, hungry for his voice, hungry for that particular glance he'd throw her when they were alone among the others, far away to have privacy but not far enough for it to be complicated. Now _everything_ is and she takes night shifts with him to remind herself that he's worth it.

 

 

 


	16. Chapter 16

  
  
**finite**  
( _adj_ )

  
  
They carry the children they were in their bodies, beneath the skin.  
  
She can still see her sometimes, the bruised little fighter coming up for air, hands still small but already used to rebellion. She had known the keep around her better than the servants, sneaked through every single hidden passage and climbed every roof; it's like she had sensed that she wouldn't be part of the keep's history – the _family's_ history - for very long and had to absorb everything fast, make her mark within the place that had so little room for her.  
  
If she could she would brush a hand over that ever-scratched cheek, fingers gently combing the hair her mother always complained about and make her voice breach the distance between them, make it no louder than a whisper: _It will be alright, love._  
  
  
–- - -  
  
  
They carry the children they were in their bodies, an echo and a surprise, like the wound that turned into a scar though you deemed it a mere scratch.  
  
He doesn't remember what he looked like but he recall how he _felt_ , can trace the path of fear and discomfort back to the looming shadows where his childhood used to be. A house that always seemed too small, walls that screamed and flowers, dried and fresh, because Liddy had taken all their words about her when she left and he needs to remember her to remember himself.  
  
If he could he would kneel down by that boy, look him in the eye long enough for the kid to notice him and his voice, creeping into the boy's every thought and desire: _Do better, be_ _better_.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
  
**foundation**  
( _noun_ )  


They say the Dalish would hang intruders from the treetops in these woods. Alive or dead, flung up among the branches and leaves until time freed them, dissolving their bones into dust.

It's a cruel fate for a cruel place; the Dales have seen entirely too much war and it marks everything here. Every day since they arrived they have been killing people – deserters and commoners so tired of death and destruction that they are easily led astray by promises of something else; _decent_ people – and it does something to you, wears you down. He knows this better than anyone, knows how long it takes to recover from the inhumanity of your own soul, the callous pragmatism of your own mind.  
  
Thom places his cleaning kit on one of the stones in the ruin they use for camp and looks around. Weathered columns and remains of what appears to have been barrel vaults surround him and the trail of the past continues a bit further down the hill, where Fairbanks sits in the midst of a crowd of soldiers. They are to return to Skyhold by dawn with the man in question as their new agent. While they had found proof to elevate him to nobility – especially with a few delicately chosen words from the Lady Ambassador, he wagers – the Inquisitor had gone down a different road.  
  
“You threw away hard work, just like that?” He turns to face Evelyn who's approaching fast, carrying two tankards and a plate of bread and cheese. They have formed the habit of taking their meals on their own, stealing a few moments of privacy.  
  
“Fairbanks, you mean?” She hands him his drink – spicy wine, from the scent of it - and sits down atop something that looks like a broken archway. “He will be useful. I think he has more power this way.”  
  
“That so?” Thom takes a seat beside her. The bread looks dry but certainly no worse than the food he's used to, that he's been used to for large slices of his life. It's only since he joined he Inquisition that he's raised his standards a little too much. _Careful there, Rainier._ He thinks for a moment about Fairbanks and his reluctance to claim his rightful title and position, thinks about the man who has been warding all these people driven off their land, the man who would rather be doing just that – in a dank _cave_ – than ride to Val Royeaux and pick out furniture for his estate. Can he say the same for himself? _Now_ , certainly but a couple of years ago the choice would have posed a challenge. The shame hits him like a blow and he has to look away.  
  
Evelyn's voice is soft, neutral. “The nobility has enough bastards as it is, there's scant need for another one. Besides, he didn't want Clara and the others entangled in that. It's hardly my place to decide for him.”  
  
Personal freedom, Thom thinks when he looks up at her again. Whenever she can - and occasionally when she actually _can't_ \- she chooses freedom, at almost any cost. There's history in that, of course, history running thick like the war in these woods and cruel like the rotting bones in the trees.

When he asks her about it her face goes dark for a heartbeat and he has time to regret the invasiveness before she responds.  
  
“I've never been good at it,” she says, thoughtful and calm; whatever dark memories he had stirred seem to have vanished now, her eyes are more amused than anything else. “Sitting room drama and dance floor politics, it suits me badly. For as long as I can remember I've wanted out.”  
  
He frowns, wondering what standards she use for herself if she fails them so miserably. What he has seen has been impressive enough, though he's the first to admit that he, in turn, expects very little from the upper classes. She's not Orlesian but the dirty games he watched and partook in had been disgusting enough to spread out in his mind, seem universal. Orlais taught him a lot, not all of it was for the better. _They've changed you_ , his mother had muttered the last time he saw her. Back then of course, arrogant and prideful, he had considered it the only compliment she had ever given him.  
  
“My mother wished for a Josephine,” Evelyn clarifies, sensing his confusion perhaps. “Instead she got a Cassandra.”  
  
He has to laugh at that, swallowing a large mouthful of his wine. Beside him Evelyn grabs a chunk of cheese and begins picking it apart. Ever since he met her she has surpassed notions he did not even know he had, notions he might be entirely too old to have, truth be told. He's twice her age, he should gave the wisdom to match his experience. But war is cold and cruel, terribly unjust and shatteringly _foul._ It doesn't soften your hard edges, it gives you a few additional ones and everything you suspected was true – the nobility only care for themselves, the lords and ladies buy Antivan silk while the commoners die like dogs, a duke will let a whole city starve to death rather than lose face in the grand fucking game – will be proven right again and again.  
  
And until he met this woman, war was all he knew. _War is home to you_ , Solas had said once, a long time ago and the memory makes Thom long for her, for what they almost had and might still stand a chance of having. Some day.  
  
“You are an incredible woman,” he says and the suddenness of his comment makes her slightly stunned, he can tell from the way her eyebrows arch and the corners of her mouth twitch. “Don't sell yourself short.”  
  
“I'm not,” she protests but she _does_ , and they both know it. She has enough self-confidence to throw herself into a dance with the mightiest vultures of the Orlesian court but a letter from home or a stray remark from someone can make every soft line in her face tighten into steel. There are plenty of hidden cracks in her seemingly solid armour and Thom sees them, _feels_ them, because he knows much more than he would like about how one goes about trying to hide those flaws. “But Fairbanks was right, though. Nobility is just another cage. Everything's a game up there. War, peace, _justice_.”

Thom remembers, though he wishes he didn't, the details of what he had said to her in that prison cell in Val Royeaux. They've never spoken of it since but he _remembers_ and he thinks she does, too. Remembers his furious shame and guilt and his lack of shields to hide behind down there, his lack of protection against what he had done. He had shown her what he hates the most about himself: the fact that where there ought to be nothing but remorse he still has room for bitterness towards the Orlesian nobility. Bitter, angry hatred towards them because they had judged _his_ crime so harshly, deemed _him_ beyond salvation when the nobles could kill each other at tea parties, when Chevaliers could ride into villages and rape every woman in sight, slaughter every beggar and child and ride away with their honour intact because of their status, their rank.  
  
He drinks quickly. For a period of time, right after he arrived to Redcliffe and helped protect the farmers there, he had managed to lie convincingly to himself about who and what he is. It's hard work, hiding from yourself, but he had succeeded and it had made him content. Not _happy_ , certainly, but close enough.  
  
Evelyn has taken the lie from him. Unceremoniously ripped it from his hands as though it doesn't carry the weight of a lifetime of death and destruction, a lifetime of cowardice and running from responsibility.  
  
She shoots him a glance over her tankard and he knows that he has never been more honest in his life – and never more miserable – and that he's going to fight with everything he has to be the kind of man that doesn't have to lie to himself to endure his own pathetic fucking existence.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
  
**furthermost**  
( _adj_ )  
  
  
Her headache increases a little more for every time she reads Josephine's summary, written on a nice piece of scented parchment. This time the headache did not start because the letters dance before her eyes but because the meaning of them is so inherently absurd that there's no way to properly fathom –  
  
 _No_.  
  
She shakes her head, looking at the words again. At least the ambassador has impeccably lovely hand-writing. _It apparently begun with an insult during the Harvest Ball in Ostwick over the quality of their milch cows and escalated to a pitched battle between two hundred soldiers last week._  
  
Cassandra had scoffed and Cullen had talked himself out of giving advice in the matter; Josephine suggests peace talks in Orlais which seems like a waste of time and resources but it's not as though she has any better ideas herself.  
  
When she shows Thom the letter he's quiet for a while, reading it a few times, it seems.  
  
“You are allowed to laugh,” she mutters, grim and tired. She wonders if he considers it. Maker knows she would have if the inane people commanding the two hundred soldiers hadn't carried her family name.  
  
But he shakes his head, remains where he is until she takes a long, deep breath and squares her shoulders.  
  
“Are you all right?” His voice hits her - a warm, gentle blow.  
  
“I just...” she rubs the bridge of her nose. “I _hate_ my family.”  
  
Around them the keep begins to slow down in the setting sun and when Thom catches her gaze wandering in the direction of the tavern, there's a brief smile and it spreads inside her chest, along with the notion that it can be this _simple_ , too.  
  
“Fancy a drink?”  
  
“At least three.” She's already on her way.  
  
Behind her, Thom chuckles. “It's a deal, my lady.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all of you for reading and extra special thanks to those of you who take the time to leave a comment! <3


	17. Chapter 17

  
  
  
**gaiety**  
( _noun_ )  
  
  
Thom assumes the fête had not been the Inquisitor's idea.   
  
Nor the Commander's, for that matter, as he'd overheard the man give a lengthy response this very morning, outlining his reasons for not attending. Good on him, Thom supposes. The rest of them had not been as lucky and they're standing here now, like statues in the meticulously cleaned keep, on display for the loyal and powerful to see. It's a mutual inspection, he knows as much. A chance to measure your assets and contemplate your next moves.   
  
The setting sun casts a deep-red light across the floor and Thom stands as far away as he possibly can, hoping there will be no one approaching to inspect him because nothing advantageous could ever come of that. He's always been mediocre at best at these kinds of gatherings, too blunt for small talk, too impatient for rewards and this was _before_ he pissed on his own honour in front of all of Orlais.   
  
The Lady Ambassador and the staff has put on a nice show, however. Brought out the rare treasures from the vaults, dusted off the chandeliers and the banners and put the prettiest maids on serving duty. He helps himself to more wine when he notices the Inquisitor herself entering the great hall.   
  
The Lady Ambassador has put on a nice show there, too. Reinvented all of their wardrobes, had terrified little servants running to the stables to ask if they could _please_ , _ser_ , _please_ get his measurements – _again_ , though he can hardly see how they could have changed since Halamshiral – and countless coin spent on making them all a little less soldier-like. Not that he blames her. Between the Dorian and Bull, there's entirely too much skin revealed on a daily basis and Thom may not be suave enough for the grand games but even he knows nobody wants to see _that_.   
  
The Inquisitor – _Evelyn_ \- looks like a striking image of Free Marcher nobility where she stands, talking to a group of minor lords and ladies. Less masks, more boldness and it's a fucking delightful trade, he concludes, trying his best not to be the leering old bastard of the fête, no matter how difficult it is to tear his gaze away from her. Gold and purple fabrics swirling around her waist and shoulders and hips and her chest, Maker's breath, that _chest_.   
  
Around him, the torrent of sounds spins faster and faster.   
  
“...was it all bluster then?”  
  
“Oh, _hardly_.”  
  
“Ferelden... not another war so soon after the Blight.”  
  
“Did you hear about Lord Salkie?”  
  
“Everyone has heard _that_ , dear.”  
  
“Madame Vivienne wouldn't let the Chargers join in on the fun tonight.” Bull now, walking up to stand beside him, arms crossed over his massive chest. It's not naked, tonight, but covered in the same sort of military formal gear as they all wear. Small mercies, Thom thinks as he turns his head to look at him.   
  
“You surprised?”  
  
Whatever friendship or bond that has formed between Madame de Fer and Bull, Thom wouldn't think either of them is naïve enough not to see each other for what they are.   
  
“Nah.” Bull shrugs. “Still, makes this party less fun. The Chargers know how to raise the spirits.”  
  
“Don't raise spirits.” Cole's distinctive voice, coming from the dark corner to their right.   
  
“Relax,” Thom nods at the kid.   
  
In the distance, he can see Evelyn slowly making her way through the room, carrying a goblet of wine in one hand and a dozen duties on her shoulders and he feels that streak of heat jolt through his body again, watching her. There's a certain kind of helplessness there, a stark sort of hunger that consumes everything in its path. It's as though some part of him has been waiting for her for longer than he can fathom, waiting for this sort of emotion, this sort of _ruin_ that she brings. And even now, with that dress and the way it accentuates parts of her body that are normally hidden behind steel and leather, even now when his mind is crowded with dirty thoughts, he knows that it's not even about that. Not at the heart of it. He wants to be with her, whatever that means. However that is. Merely _be_ with her, in her company, by her side.   
  
He wishes that desire could feel like a gift, not like a curse to spare her from.   
  
“You look bored.” Evelyn's voice is amused; her faint smile carries a scent of bathing oils and spices.   
  
“Better than Halamshiral, Boss.”   
  
“They want to raise spirits,” Cole says before Thom has a chance to respond. He's standing among them now, hat pushed back so he can get a better look at the crowd, most likely. “And he has a lot of thoughts about your breasts.”  
  
“Oh for the-” Thom scowls at the kid but Bull's guffaw and Evelyn's slightly more subdued laughter interrupt any attempt at composing himself again.   
  
  
  
\---  
  
  
  
She finds him outside, standing in the archway beneath the stairs that lead up to the main entrance of the keep. It's not a solitary spot, not entirely, so she assumes he still wants to keep one eye on the feast while enjoying some time alone. It's one of her favourite strategies, too.   
  
When he sees her walk down the last steps and round the small tree that grows there, he nods a greeting. Inside the dancing has nearly come to an end and she's exhausted every fraction of her mind tonight, as well as her feet and her face trying to uphold a presentable posture and a pleasant smile. She feels her muscles soften with every step into the shadows by Thom's side.   
  
“A silver for your thoughts?” She leans against the cool stones, tilting her head back a little, pressing her shoulders against the wall behind her and enjoying the temporary respite. Her body is made for battle, not dresses and gatherings. Maker knows she's not even used to seeing herself like this: frills and skirts and silk streaming down her legs, _trapping_ her; whenever she looks down she catches a glimpse of her tits that feel naked even fully covered up because she's so used to bindings and layers of clothing under another layer of armour that it comes as a bit of shock every time.   
  
She catches a crooked smile playing beneath the beard. “I thought Cole took care of that earlier.”  
  
“Oh.” The memory is a strangely happy little twist inside her chest and brings out a smile before she composes herself. “That was hours ago. I rather expected something else to have come up since then.”  
  
“I'm a simple man.” He sounds momentarily bashful but the expression in his face tells her he's not.   
  
She laughs. “Indeed.”  
  
“So. Are you escaping your party, my lady?” He folds his arms across his chest and she can feel his gaze travelling over her body when she isn't looking. Simple man, indeed.   
  
“Yes. You know me.”  
  
His voice deepens, soft around the reply. “I do.”  
  
Evelyn breathes out, watching the thin smoke swirl up between them. It's growing colder fast now, a little more frost every day as they wake up. The grass under their feet is damp and cold in the night air but she is warm from the crowds and the social efforts; Thom doesn't seem to freeze either in his new formal wear. There's a flutter deep in her belly at the image – all broad shoulders and thick arms and _hands_ , scarred and strong - and she wonders briefly if Cole can sense her thoughts even here, now. But she remembers asking once about his powers and she remembers, faintly, that he can only sense people in need of him, people in pain.   
  
Oh, _Thom_.   
  
He has earned his pain; she wants to take it from him. The conflict in that is enough to tear at her heart and there is no way around it, merely _through_ it.   
  
It had been her suggestion to start over and she had not guessed it would be a battle of its own but it _is_ and she considers retreating – _I'm sorry, Thom; I can't do this, I can't trust you_ – as often as she considers just blindly charging forward, no words, no time to think, just skin on skin and a disregard for reality and consequence. Threading between these outposts is hard work, hopeless work.   
  
“Josephine's set on introducing me to some influential merchants from Val Chevin.” Evelyn allows herself to wish, just for one brief moment, that once this is all over she won't have to meet with anyone else ever again unless she truly wants to.   
  
“Tonight?”  
  
She nods; the stones scrape lightly against her scalp – _mind your hair, dear_ – so she adjusts her position, straightens up. When she tilts her head she notices Thom is looking at her with that intense sort of gaze, the one that slips under her skin, roots itself inside her chest.   
  
He takes a step towards her, his dark hair shifting in silver and black, lit by the moon and stray candlelight. Inhaling, she stretches out a hand, reaching for him and he obliges wordlessly. Her hand against his cheek, stroking it tenderly and something in his gaze opens up at her touch, something deep and dark and so honest that it _hurts_. They have plenty of matters to sort out, countless bridges to build and lies to forget but she doesn't care about that now, here, when he stands mere inches away and she can tell from the way he looks at her that he already _knows_ everything she isn't saying. There's safety in that. There's safety and shelter and _freedom_ in that, in the brokenness of their lives.   
  
“I need to return to the guests,” she mumbles in a voice that isn't entirely her own, her fingers trailing along his jawline, firm and sharp underneath the beard. “Maker take this party.”  
  
He gives her a long, searching glance and then his hands are on her hips, pulling her closer, _tighter_ , her chest against his and his breath catching in her hair as he leans in, letting one hand travel up her side, slowly, until it's following the line of her throat, coming around to rest at the nape of her neck. His other hand is at the small of her back, among the soft fabrics of her endless, impossible skirts.   
  
“Think about sparring,” he says and his voice is a rumble through her body. “I'll run new recruits from Denerim through the drills tomorrow morning. Swordsmen.”   
  
“No archers?” She grins widely now, remembering the last time the two of them were training new soldiers and arrows ended up in the strangest places. One of the recruits had started crying.   
  
“No archers.” His fingertips rub tiny circles over the tense spots in her neck as he talks; she closes her eyes, tips her head forward so their foreheads are touching, resting against each other, holding each other up. There's a strange surge in her as Thom shifts a little, his hand a bit unsteady.   
  
“Tomorrow then,” she says, stepping away, untangling herself from the moment that has spread into something far more than she intended. Vaster, larger, more _fragile_. She smiles a little. “I'll leave you alone with your... thoughts.”  
  
Thom laughs at that, a quiet, hearty laugh that settles like comfort in her bones.  
  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
**gift**  
( _noun_ )  
  
  
She gives him a new suit of armour the day after he stands trial at Skyhold; he doesn't use it at first, not for a long time and then only in pieces, never the whole set at the same time.   
  
He gives her a bottle of ale from the Free Marches, a brewery near Ostwick that she's mentioned in passing because her father would purchase large quantities of their brew. There's a flash of something in her eyes when he places the bottle in her hands, a surprised happiness that lands with a loud noise at the back of his mind, his heart. They share the bottle on her balcony as they listen to the soldiers down in the courtyard practice their technique into the late evening.   
  
She brings him food every morning for the first days after his return when he cannot bear to face anyone else. Bread, fish, cheese, fruit all lined up on plates that she puts down in front of him; she considers kissing him on the cheek but never does.   
  
He hands her his heart; she can feel the weight of it in her chest.   
  
  
  


 


	18. Chapter 18

 

 **guelder rose**  
( _bot_. _noun_ )

 

Her childhood is canopies in blue and red, never-ending sessions in the library with grandfather's fingers tapping along her spine as she reads, painstakingly slow even as the years pile up – _Trevelyan's youngest is the village idiot, did you know?_  
  
Her childhood is ruined dresses and reprimands, teeth gritted around the excuses Mother doesn't want to hear.  
  
Her childhood is flowers and a garden that is the most beautiful thing behind the double walls of Ostwick because Grandfather takes care of it himself, every day for as long as he lives. It was built for her grandmother Evelina who is a ghost and a memory fluttering from flower to flower here in the orchard that she loved and Grandfather gives them all flower names, _orchid_ names because Grandmother loved to surround herself with them. Maxwell is a slipper orchid, cousin Helaine a Cymbidium, Anne is dubbed a moth orchid.  
  
 _But you, dear_ , grandfather says under his breath as he's cleaning Evelyn's latest wound – a deep, bleeding gash on her shin – with light fingers and poultices that burn, burn, burn. _You are a guelder rose. They want to grow free, in the forests. Not even your grandmother could make them thrive here._  
  
Her childhood is her grandfather and she thinks about him as she kneels down in Skyhold's garden, fingers trailing the white mass of tiny, dense flowers in front of her.  
  
“I didn't know we had these here,” she says, mostly to herself. A few feet away Thom is tending to a tree, removing dead branches. They have been keeping to the castle grounds for more than a fortnight now and the lack of action sits like a restless ache in their bones, a scratch beneath ribs and lungs.  
  
He looks in her direction, gaze falling on the flowers her hands are full of. “Have you ever travelled through the Planasene Forest, my lady?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“I had just joined the army when we were sent out to scout across the Vimmarks,” Thom says and throws the last piece of dead, dried tree on the pile beneath his feet. He rakes a hand through his hair that has become messy from the work and she lets herself enjoy the motion, take it it. “Ended up stuck in the woods for over a week. Those flowers grow everywhere there.”  
  
It still feels like a novelty to hear him speak of _then_ , of the man he didn't conjure up out of thin air one rainy day on the Storm Coast but the man he was before, still is in his heart even if he's afraid to admit it. _You are who you are or who you think you have to be._  
  
“My grandfather tried for years to get these to grow in his garden in Ostwick,” she tells him because there's a person inside her, too, a whole human being behind the titles and the missions carried out in the name of the Inquisition.  
  
Thom sheds the tools by the branches and takes a few steps towards her. “What was he like, your grandfather?”  
  
  
–--  
  
  
That night she retreats to her private quarters to find a small stem of white, dense flowers on her pillow - forming a tiny curved imprint on the soft surface - and the scent carries over into her dreams.

* * *

  
  
  
  
  
 **gust**  
( _noun_ )

 

"Sera!" Evelyn's voice is more annoyed than shocked, though he can spot a trace of apprehension in her movements when she walks up to the elf who's still pounding on the dead man on the ground. " _Sera_!"

"What?"

"He's dead. You're _done_."

But the beating sort of loops in her body, Thom can tell from her expression and her lips that are pressed together - a vicious circle of emotion and reaction and no sensible thought within reach. He can tell from the way she goes rigid under his hands when he places them on her arms, hoping the pressure alone will hinder her next blow and it does; she turns around, _snarling_ at him, but when he locks their gazes she blinks, exhales, and for a second he can see something else entirely there - fear, confusion, panic - before she shakes him off and straightens up. Evelyn doesn't say anything else, merely takes a few steps away and announces to them all in a detached tone that they are to return home.

 

\---

  
  
“Not going to be all judgy?” Sera mutters later, in the mostly deserted tavern. Night has already fallen and the tavern maids are eager to serve the last round.  
  
They haven't said much since he found her in here but they have been drinking and Sera has been grunting the occasional insult into her tankard. _Pissbag_. _Arseface. Son of a nug._  
  
“I thought the mission went well.”  
  
“Tell that to Lady Judgy-face.” She grimaces. “Says I don't care about the little people just because it got a bit ugly, right? Bloody noble talking to _me_ about little people.”  
  
Thom inhales. Taking a deep drawn-out swig of his drink he wonders if even their lovely ambassador could navigate these waters without crashing into a hidden rock somewhere. Maker knows he isn't equipped to act as the go-between either it but he can't leave it as it is, not when this girl is looking at him like she's going to drink every cask of alcohol in the castle and then go beat someone up for breathing wrong. He's had enough soldiers under his command – fuck, he's _been_ a soldier – to recognise a meltdown when he sees one. Sera had placed the commoners in that village in danger by going about the mission in the wrong way, no question about it. The blood is partly on her hands and she knows that, under all those layers of abrasive defence she _knows_ and the knowledge hurts her.  
  
Her methods might occasionally be horrifically casual and random but he certainly doesn't doubt her _intentions_. That's all she _is_ at times: raw, unfocused intention and there's something twisting in his chest at the thought.  
  
“The Inquisitor must be about the greater good even when she helps you,” he says, wondering how self-righteous Evelyn had come off earlier, how high she had allowed herself to rise. She had been frustrated and when she is, he has learned after all this time, she sits on her high horses throwing accusations like they are spells. In this case the Inquisitor herself is not without blame either, which will likely add to her irritation. There had been no sensible need for them to send Inquisition forces into a squabble between nobles – if they are to intervene in every fucking conflict over lands and honour and damn Antivan furniture, Corypheus will have to wait for another decade before they get around to seek him out – and Thom had frowned when he learned the whole story behind today's mission. _Too bloody unpredictable_ , Evelyn says in his head. _I don't care about Lord Arsehole, but this was a disgusting mess. “_ Presenting herself, you know. She needs all cards on the table.”  
  
“Pfft. My arse can think about the greater good.”  
  
He drinks again. “Glad we agree.”  
  
Opposite him Sera shifts in her seat, reaching for the nearly empty bottle of wine to refill her mug. She makes a little grimace as the horrid excuse for wine that they apparently make here enter her system. He searches for her gaze as she looks up again.

"I care, yeah?" Less venom in her voice now, the cracks in it are covered with different emotions.  
  
“I know.” He admires her for that, the _caring_ and the cleverness behind it. When he was her age he didn't care about a single fucking cause save getting ladies in his bed, wine in his cups and gold in his pockets for killing wildlife and the occasional enemy to the Orlesian empire. Her Red Jenny thing is smart and wicked, much more elaborate than anything he could pull off and he's constantly reminded of how deep her connections go, how far the net has been cast. She is - even if she doesn't believe him when he says it - bloody impressive.  
  
The tavern is empty now except for the two of them; he wonders if they are going to be asked to leave or if they are too close to the Inquisitor to be allowed certain freedoms.  
  
“She cares too,” he adds, feeling oddly traitorous as he sits here and talks about her even if it had been Evelyn who asked him to look for Sera in the first place.

“I suppose.” Sera shrugs but he can see that the anger from before has vanished and been replaced by shades of her usual crude humour. She empties her drink and rests her elbows on the table, leaning forward with a small smile on her lips. “So. You going to pick out a serving girl for me or not?”  
  
The abrupt change of topic leaves him silent for a beat before he gathers himself. “Right.”  
  
“Not the weird-looking ones.” She chuckles. “You always pick the weird-looking ones.”  
  
He smiles and shakes his head, grateful to be discussing women instead of morals. “Says the girl who fancies qunari.”

 

 


	19. Chapter 19

 

 **hail  
** ( _noun_ )

 

Funalis brings hail.

Early on the morning of All Soul's Day, Evelyn wakes to the sound of smattering, hammering rain that quickly morphs into something even more intense. She wraps the blanket tighter around her, regretting that she left the windows open last night. Her mother – in one of her rare fits of old buried superstition the Chantry would abhor - used to say it was bad luck to air for the spirits, especially on a day like this one.

At Funalis, her mother had claimed, the spirits are looking for way back home.

 

\--–

 

Liddy, with her tales and her fantasies, a mind wrapped in the wondrous and the extraordinary; he often wonders what sort of woman she would have become.

He's older, knows better, but she can convince him of the most absurd pranks and adventures simply because she has words for it all, a word for everything and a tale to go with it and he lets her drag him along to the marketplaces and the abandoned alleys, lets her stop outside the university and stare at it for so long he thinks she is chained to the spot.

"I want to live here," she tells him once. "They have rooms full of _books_ , Thom!"

"Only nobles live here," he says and watches the passing disappointment in her face before she shrugs, takes another few steps towards the walls around the entrance.

"Ha! You'll _see_."

 

\--

 

"No play, I hope?" Cassandra finishes her bowl of porridge and shoves it away slightly, looking across the table at Cullen and Evelyn who grins, almost despite herself.

"No play," she shakes her head, reaches for another slice of bread and a large chunk of cheese. She's still cold and eating helps. "I don't think the Inquisition forces need to waste time on that just because it's All Soul's Day."

It's never been her favourite part of the Chantry, all these dramatic re-enactments of Andraste's life and deeds. At the fringes of her memory there are endless moments in chilly or too-hot rooms where the heat from the candles had felt like the last straw, the final push; endless moments of chanting, of listening, of looking down at her hands that always had some scab or scar to examine. Brianna by her side unless they were both being punished for one thing or another, Brianna giggling or teasing her, elaborating on whatever passage they were listening to. _You are disrespectful and childish_ , Mother Gertrude echoes. _A shame for your family._

"Surely there is no training today?" Her voice sounds neutral enough but Evelyn guesses that Cassandra actually _does_ find it troubling to deny every Andrastian tradition, regardless of how well she separates her beliefs from her current work. _Their_ work, such as it is.

"Not today." Evelyn looks out over the small crowd in the dining hall, the familiar faces and the less familiar ones. In the beginning, back when she had learned that Skyhold had become a pilgrimage she had felt obliged to learn names, memorize faces, to be forthcoming and present for each and every one of them. She's never been content to _watch_ but sometimes - her commander and a few of her companions had pointed out in various notes of despair - you need to let others do their work and trust it to be good enough. "Besides, look at the bloody weather."

"I will run training courses as usual first thing tomorrow morning," Cullen adds as he gets to his feet. "We have plenty of new recruits and none of them are the least bit fit to fight anything."

A brief smile tugs at the corners of Cassandra's mouth. "I am sure you will shout them into shape soon enough."

 

\--

 

His father who is two different men in the memories he's created.

One man: strong and hard-working, never still. He works all day and returns home to make wooden toys for Liddy and sometimes for Thom, even if Thom is too old for them and shouldn't indulge in childishness, shouldn't be _coddled_.

One man: tired and fat, always drunk. Thom does not look that man in the eyes, not even when he pleads.

 

\--

 

 

Last Funalis they had still been in Haven.

She had walked along the outlines of the water for a long time, everything still so fresh in her then, so _new_. She had been able to taste her laughter and last words to Brianna, every motion, every sight still within reach. The torn-out, crumpled-up memories from whatever happened before everything ended like scattered corners of a map she hadn't known how to read. The retaliation of grief suddenly too much to bear.

Blackwall had found her there eventually, the way he often did. She doesn't recall if they had spoken or if he had just stayed with her for a moment. She remembers his jacket around her shoulders, remembers the stab of wonder in her at the kind gesture.

"You lost someone," he had said later in the tavern where a few of them had sought their rest after memorial services.

"Many did," she had responded but there had been something in his face then, something warm and open and reassuring, so with wine in her blood and his gaze locked with hers she had told him about Brianna and everything that died with her.

 

\--

 

His mother who disappears behind her grief, behind her exhaustion and the life that never was, long before her body dies.

 _Your mother was the most beautiful woman in all of Jader_ , father claims with pride when Liddy's laughter still fills their home. Claims it again many years later when only bitterness remains. _Orlesian cow._

Thom remembers soft hands and tears, remembers hard, cutting words and a bottomless desire for something he could never give her.

 

\--

 

Her chamber suits him, she thinks as he stands in the middle of it, shoulders wet from crossing the grounds in the rain that still occasionally morphs into hail. The tips of his hair are soaked, too, slick against his throat.  
  
Despite all these months they have known each other and all the boundaries they have broken together he has rarely visited her here and she realises that she has never asked him to. That's the thing with Thom - she's still trying out his real name in her head when she thinks about him, branding it into herself - and with their relationship as they know it: he doesn't demand anything from her. Not her time, not her love, not her forgiveness and it clashes with the greedy captain who tried to play the games of the nobles, clashes with the convinced warrior who asks for nothing less than complete devotion and self-sacrifice for the greater good, clashes with the quietly passionate man she has unveiled bit by bit and found room for in her own heart.

Shame, she knows when their eyes meet. His feelings for her are still cloaked in shame.

She can see it in him now when he puts down the book he has borrowed from her – an old tome chronicling the first Exalted March - and his gaze falls upon the pile of reports she keeps in a disorganised mess on her desk thinking _tomorrow I will sort through it all_.  
  
She can see it as he picks up the notes and letters that make up the entirety of Leliana's information about Captain Thomas Rainier. For a heartbeat, a shivering moment, she thinks she ought to take it back but there are no secrets there, in the blunt compilation of his life. Not to him and no longer to her. Parts of it run though her without effort and parts of it chafe inside, like wounds in her idea of him. _On the surface, Rainier safeguarded his men's interests, but further investigation reveals that he was primarily concerned with his own advancement and profit._

There's a distant, muffled sound of thunder outside and she looks through the window as though she would be able to see the noise. As a child she would escape every time she heard the rumbling of the sky, convinced she could chase the lightening, touch it with her hands. Thunder. It has always felt like the breath and pulse of the world, usually quiet but then flaring up like rage or grief. Like the passion of nature.

“I didn't know their names,” Thom says suddenly, in a voice that is thin as rain but _burning_.

“Their names?”  
  
He looks up at her, then down at the parchment in his hand. It looks unsteady. “The names of Callier's children.”

 

\---

 

There are _countless_ deaths for many years, all of them unmentioned, unmarked. He's a soldier and soldiers kill and he can't allow himself to think about it, _doesn't_ think about it.

Thom is a good soldier. It's the only thing he has ever been good at in his life. He's big and strong and resilient, has a mind for reading battlefields and a body made for dominating it; he can follow orders and protect the innocent and fall asleep at the end of the day, not counting the bodies.

The first time he watches a man die outside of a battlefield, outside of armour and the scent of blood and steel, he swallows bile but recovers quickly. The grand game has a different set of honour and morals, he had known before he rose in the ranks. Everyone knows. But now he _knows_ and that is different. _He_ is different.

 

\--

 

The rain has ceased and the sky has darkened around them as the fire burns, frenetically, on a small hill just outside the grounds.  
  
The fire of Immolation and it is slanted differently this year, fits worse than usual. Worse than the Conclave and the subsequent title, the sword that had been placed in her hands. The Herald of Andraste with her blotched record and interrupted attempts at serving the Chantry, with her doubts and disgrace and lack of patience for formalities.  
  
 _Anne_ , she thinks this year as the flames spit on the soaked ground. It should have been Anne with her golden smile and soft edges, her unnatural ability to calm and soothe, restore order. Back when Evelyn still thought there had been an intervention by the Maker – thought it in secret, eyes closed and hands curled into fists on her pillow at night – she had found that the truly remarkable thing would be if the Maker choose someone like _her_ when there are people like Anne in the world. But her sister has magic and Evelyn has a sword – and in Ostwick their mother cries behind closed doors, cursing the Maker for giving her such daughters.

Here Mother Gisele recites the Chant of the Void, a sharp silhouette, her words like daggers in the crisp night air. _O unrepentant, faithless, treacherous, they who are judged and found wanting._ Brianna and Evelyn would take turns with it when they were sleepless and young, so young still that nothing stayed in their bones, so young that every pain was something to overcome, leave behind. She supposes it had seemed funny, then.  
  
“Only Our Lady shall weep for them,” she mumbles now, along with the rest and every word lands hard and clear.

 

\--

 

Vincent and Lorette Callier, their four children - Laurine, Alphonse, Francette, Germaine, he wishes he had never read the report, wishes he had never seen the shape of the children on that parchment – their five retainers, their two guardsmen.  
  
His fingers fumble as he lights the candles in the chantry where he feels unwelcome, as though he is sneaking in to steal grace meant for someone else.  
  
His hands shake but the candles burn.

 

\---

 

She finds him at Andraste's feet.

The human body, she has been taught over and over, can contain so much. The human mind and its vastness, a thousand little cuts and injuries, all the daily wear and tear, our own history and how it breaks us and all of it tucked away _inside,_ kept safe and hidden.  
  
He doesn't say anything as she sits down beside him on the floor in the small room where the statue of the Maker's bride seems to swallow every inch of air and light.  
  
He doesn't say anything as she unfolds the notes and parchments he had read earlier in her quarters, smooths them against her knees. They've been in her pocket all day, a peculiar reminder.  
  
He doesn't say anything when they burn, reduced to ashes and dust the way history can never be.

“Let them go, Thom,” she says, instead; her hand finds his and it's so close to the candles that it stings but it matters very little because at her touch he jerks out of his thoughts and all she will remember later is his _eyes_ , his gaze that falls open before her. “Let them go.”  
  
He kisses her then, hard and quick and urgent, his free hand pulling her against him and her hand yanking his hair, her teeth scraping against his lips and that little surprised noise she makes growing into a moan as he deepens the kiss. Fingers digging into her shoulder, into his scalp, his lip between hers and the rustling sound as they tear themselves apart.  
  
When he leaves, not much later, she remains for a long while in front of the statue, watching the candles burn.

 

 


	20. Chapter 20

 

**halcyon** **days**  
( _noun_ )  
  


 

When the dusk comes down over the settlements it always brings with it a certain sense of accomplishment. A day's work done, another note in the journal he doesn't keep. He feels the ghost of his father then, rustling through the memories he rarely visits and the thoughts he seldom thinks. He used to keep track of everything he made and sold, every scrap of gold to his name. _A Rainier is honest, if nothing else._   
  
“Captain.” One of the youngest recruits – a short, stocky Marcher lad with a face full of freckles and questions – stands before him, nodding towards the sparring ground. “We have finished cleaning up.”  
  
Thom nods. “Go get some supper then. All of you.”  
  
“Brilliant. I mean, yes, ser. _Captain.”_ The recruit makes a nervous little bow and it's almost painful to watch him wobble between and inside the new boundaries of his life. He'll have to shape up soon enough or break himself trying but Captain Rainier isn't known for strict decorum or formalities, so he places a hand on the boy's shoulder.   
  
“Hurry now before Lenton and Beaulac steal all the ham.”   
  
“Oh.” The boy's face lights up. “Thank you, captain.”  
  
 _Poor_ _sod_.   
  
He likes Montsimmard, he thinks as he watches the recruit run off, likes its rhythm and atmosphere. It's _bustling_ though not as overblown as Val Royeaux, not half as stifling in its endeavours to push you back and hold you down. There's room for everyone out here - the Wardens and the Chevaliers, templars and mages, the common soldiers and the ordinary people they're trying to protect. The deep-rooted restlessness in him comes to a halt in places like this one and he holds on to it, to them, as though they could somehow anchor him enough to remind him of a home.   
  
Later, as the night falls and the noise from the soldiers disappears among the heavy shadows between the small houses and work stations, Thom sits by the makeshift desk in his private lodging, putting the last light of his almost finished candles to good use. The letter on top of his stack of unattended correspondence requires a few more readings, the words already memorized but their intent and purpose an unrest at the back of his mind. Ser Robert Depuis has never deigned to contact him in these kinds of matters – _affairs that concern the future of the Orlesian empire_ – before and he's neither young nor naïve enough to believe it's a sign of anything other than Depuis needing a hand with something dirty. The question usually is _how_ dirty, how dangerous, how _much_. The chevaliers cannot be involved in everything and there are times when the sword of a simple military officer with no bonds to anyone important and a sizeable greed is good enough.   
  
He rubs his forehead, starts again from the top.   
  
  
  
  


* * *

 

 

She doesn't want to go.  
  
She hates the family estate, hates Ostwick where everyone knows her face and here she is, reluctant to _go_ to the point where it seems impossible to. On the evening before departure her equipment remain in a disarray on the floor of her bedchamber for hours before a maid places it all on the bed and leaves with a small curtsy. _My_ _Lady_. Even the servants in her parents' estate disagree with her, it's like a credo between the walls.   
  
Evelyn looks down at her travelling cloak, her best leather sheath, a newly purchased dagger and some volumes of Chantry history she will never actually read. It happens on occasion, however, that she pretends to be utterly immersed in literature just to be left alone. A fine trick she had once picked up from her grandfather who used to bring a book with him wherever he went, in case he ever ended up in a situation where he could be expected to make conversation.   
  
The maid hasn't touched her greatsword, however, nor her collection of hilts, runes and assorted improvements that she carries around just in case.   
  
It would perhaps seem odd – at least to anyone not raised by a family with tight bonds to the Chantry and its many servants - to find such a large amount of weapons and battle-related items in the packs of someone travelling to a peace summit, she thinks to herself as she sits down on the side of the bed. Her feet are bare against the floor. All of last night she had slept badly, too hot under the blankets and too cold whenever she rid herself of them. She feels the waking hours now, like echoes in her bones.   
  
“This horrid mage riot will have to end soon.” Lady Trevelyan – the _proper_ Lady Trevelyan, slender and beautiful with impeccable hair – stands in the doorway. “Then we can discuss your future again, my dear.”  
  
 _It is time for you to stop running away._  
  
“The templars have rioted against their superiors, too,” Evelyn points out, voice sharp and unbroken but her words ultimately pointless.   
  
It is difficult to see the world's squalor in the face of all this splendour, she has thought many times since she first left her home behind. Competitions, false diplomacy and social gatherings, all of those shields against the truths out there among the fallen soldiers and worn-down peacekeepers.   
  
“The Divine will resolve matters.” Her mother is unshakable in her own fashion. Prouder than any military leader and with more faith in her cause than the bloody Chantry.   
  
“I'm not sure, mother. Both parties will appear, this is true, though I can't see how either side would be able to give up at this point.”   
  
Her mother scoffs. “A compromise forged by the Divine is not giving up.”  
  
Evelyn sighs, looking down at her sword again. She can see her mother's gaze on it, too, her disapproval almost a tangible presence in the air between them. Compromise is such a harsh, heavy word.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
“So I hear your cousin is getting married to a lord from Nevarra, Trevelyan?” Brianna shifts position on the bench inside the tavern, the wood creaking under her weight. She's a big girl, almost as tall as her husband Oswald who's returning to their table with three mugs of ale and a triumphant grin on his face.   
  
“Got these for free. We should never leave Haven.”  
  
Evelyn stretches out her legs and grabs hold of her share of the free ale.   
  
“Sounds good to me. And yes, she is,” she says in response to Brienna. “Lord Something of house Something.”  
  
“When is the wedding?”  
  
“Wintersend, perhaps? I didn't listen.”  
  
Both Brianna and Oswin laugh. “You, dear Lady Trevelyan, are _hopeless_.”

They remain in the tavern until the songs cease and the crowd scatter and Evelyn grabs Brianna's arm then, locks her own gaze with her best friend's until they both stop smiling.   
  
“We should get out of here now,” she whispers. “We could board a ship. Any ship.”  
  
Once, it would have been a thrilling plot, a decision even. Before Oswald they would even have been half-way on board, laughing at their own _nerve_. But they're not children any more, life is not a joke and Brianna shakes her head, slowly. “I think we will all have to do our part in the days to come.”  
  
  
\---  
  
  
In the ashes of the temple - of their lives - Evelyn picks up a broken templar helmet and wonders, words and sobs catching in her throat, why her part must feel like a punishment of the kind the Chantry reserves for its darkest, most soulless sinners. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I could never regret this life,” Blackwall tells her earnestly many months after Haven finally crumbles into ruins and smoke, his voice bending in the way it does when he speaks of things that are important, things that seem solid and heavy like duty. “Not with you in it.”

Her gaze falls then, unsure for a heartbeat, but then his hand finds her waist and she lets out a deep, shaking breath that feels like a gasp and she knows, knows deep within the bones of her chest, that he is _right_.

 

 

 

 


	21. Chapter 21

 

 **heal  
** ( _verb_ )

Her fingers curved over the back of his hand for a little longer than necessary as he gives her a sword on the training ground, a flask of water afterwards, a slice of bread when they break their fast together.

His lingering half-smile across the table when they all share a meal in the tavern and it's Evelyn's turn to spin a tale, opting for the most vulgar one she can find if only for the fact that some of them still find it so _unexpected_ , coming from her; Thom is not easily shocked and she can sense his approval in the air, the warmth in it hitting her like a secret fire.

Her shadow in the stables, made taller and more imposing by the flames that paint strange shapes on the wall beside his workbench. The light that falls on her face as she laughs at something he says.

 

* * *

 

 

 **herbalism  
** ( _noun_ )

 

Blood lotus grow in large patches by the water near the house he borrows in the Hinterlands. _Borrows_ , with that stitch in his chest every time someone steers too close, looks too much they belong there. When he learns down in the village that the woman who used to live there – a hunter they say, possibly an apostate, hadn't she always appeared a bit peculiar – was killed by bears he dares to feel at home for a day or two, scatters his scant belongings and lets out a deep breath.

 

\---

She stands waist-deep in grey-blue sludge when Solas - always strangely, unnervingly _calm_ \- shares his wisdom in passing and informs her that Dawn lotus is useful for several different restoratives. Without questioning she reaches to grab the flower growing nearby, stumbles slightly and lets out a litany of angry curses before Blackwall grabs hold of her shoulders and pulls her back up. Around them the undead wail, her soaked armour stinks of this Maker-forsaken mire but she can't help but laugh as she meets Blackwall's gaze because there's a rivulet of mud running down his forehead, landing on the bridge of his nose. Her ungloved finger is faster than his steel-clad hand and he grins at her touch - a quick grin, hidden by his beard and the way he turns away again before anyone notices.

 

–--

He arrives in Val Royeaux by nightfall and walks slowly through the streets he first discovered as a young man. Because he prepares, readies himself to die at long last, his head is heavy with memories, scenes and fragments. Someone told him about the apples, once. The apples growing in abundance by the gallows, the trees planted there to mark the path; it is said that the fruit taste differently depending on where you're headed, that a bite will be bitter for the lover with betrayal in his heart but sweet for the one who remains true. _La pomme vie et mort._

The apple is crisp in his mouth, warmed by sun and sweet as sugar and he doesn't know if it's a consolation or a mockery of one.  
  
–--

Vivienne kneels down by the overgrown rocks well outside Skyhold's grounds, threading her staff through leaves and weeds and autumn flowers still in bloom. Even here in the peaceful glen where a couple of foxes are their only company in their search for redmoss, she carries herself like a player of the grand game of Orlais. But Evelyn knows every game has its moments of rest, quiet beats in-between and she had seen one of those as she agreed to this in the first place. Sees it again as the other woman observes her for a while, her gaze searching for something.

“He's a lucky man,” she says, simply. “Few women would have forgiven such a lie.”

And Evelyn has the explanation – the _protest_ – swelling at the back of her tongue before she realises that it's true, that she has.

 

* * *

 

 

 **honour  
** ( _noun_ )

  
As they await scouting reports from Sahrnia and prepare their journey there they receive report after report outlining a harsh fate for the already scant number of Wardens they've tied to their cause. There's a thread of discomfort in her for every mission summary she goes through, for every concerned look on the commander's face as she leans over the war table to follow the lines of their allies and foes. A sharp sense of doubt that she cannot put to rest because for every victory there's a shadow, a shade of future defeats. That's not the way for an Inquisitor to think but she does and it seems impossible to remodel her own mind. The Grey Wardens are fighting their way to extinction and she has not heard from Loghain in a long time now and all of it - the needless, hopeless sacrifices in their ranks, the terror at Adamant, the expression in the Warden Commander's face as she saw the destruction and recognised it as her own failure - twists in her.

"They were corrupted," Thom says, swinging the ax over the wood on the stub outside the stables. She knows without even looking at him that he's frustrated, too. "It's such a waste for an order of warriors to fall victim to corruption of all things."

"It is," she agrees. "At least these defeats are honest ones."

She ought, perhaps, to see them as honourable but she can't look at death this way. Not yet, not now, not ever. Death is death and there's too much of it in her life. She needs an excess of _life_ to balance it out, needs light and warmth and sun on her face, someone else's skin under her hands, hope in her chest and confidence in their cause. So today she sits out here while Cullen frowns over the war table and Cassandra attempts to contact missing Seekers and Leliana does whatever it is Leliana does - Evelyn is still not entirely certain and she is afraid to ask because there are questions that ought to remain untouched. Today she sits out here, basking in the pale autumn sun like an overgrown cat and watching Thom work.

He throws the severed pieces of wood on the ground, missing the pile by a few inches but doesn't pick them up again. He reaches for another log. She sits perched on the sealed well, arms folded across her chest and that particular fascination with seeing him like this barely contained within. They have not spoken at length since All Soul's Day, have not done much at all beyond enjoying the kind of fragile bridge that had been created from it but she can feel the dissatisfaction trickle down her spine now, wants more, wants further.

“So.” She takes a step towards him. “Speaking of Wardens, you never told me the whole story of how you met Blackwall.”

“I didn't?” He sounds somewhat surprised. “I suppose I owe you that.”  
  
Evelyn raises an eyebrow. “You seem reluctant.”  
  
Thom chuckles, darkly. He's stopped working and looks around, gaze falling on the merchants further away, the two servants walking up the stairs to the kitchen, then her face, again. “It's not a good story, my lady.”  
  
“Let me decide that.”  
  
He sighs, but only barely. “As you wish.”

The Thom he tells her about, the man in his stories of his own life is certainly not the Grey Warden she first met. She wonders as he appears in her imagination – greedy, drunk, without honour – when he made up his mind about who he is, when he made himself. She wants to retrace those steps, undo some parts and create others herself but she knows the only choice is _him_ , as he is right here with her, mere steps away. 

When he has finished his tale of Thom and Blackwall in the tavern his face is turned towards her; he is still, _waiting_ and there's a gut-wrenching blend of disbelief and honest need in his gaze as she closes the distance between them, moving quick, decisively. Her hand around his neck then, fingers buried in damp hair, pressed against warm skin that gives a faint scent of sweat and leather and heat, like a distant echo of summer. Her other hand on his back, travelling up to rest on the muscles between his shoulder blades. Through the sweaty tunic she can feel his every move against her palm and he looks at her, truly _looks_ at her for the longest time before she pulls him closer and kisses him, thorough and stubborn in the face of all the history, all the people they have been and the people they are yet to become.  
  
She _chooses_ him and the earth crumbles softly beneath their feet.   



	22. Chapter 22

 

 **hunger  
** ( _verb_ )

 

The insatiable hunger of the winter season hits them in Sahrnia.

It's an echo inside, a madness, a twist to her lungs and a blow to her gut as she walks by Thom's side along the snowy hills and icy slopes that surround them. The landscape breathes war, aches with terror and that grotesque scent of lyrium that has branded itself in her nostrils and throat and despite this, despite the much larger scope of their efforts and struggles, she finds that all she can really think about is the way Thom groans with the effort of pushing a dead templar off her, the look in his eyes when he holds her gaze, the way he holds her just a little bit too long afterwards, his breaths against her neck.

It's an echo, swallowing everything in its path.

Sera laughs about the statues, pulling Thom with her – _titsicles, I believe the word you're looking for is titsicles_ \- until Vivienne groans, exasperated and not even reluctantly amused and Evelyn has to bite her lower lip to refrain from laughing.

Evelyn insists they'll help an Orlesian chevalier - Michel de Chevin, his name familiar enough to seem like someone she knows or _ought_ to - even if no one else vocally approves of that decision. _Demons_ , Bull says with an audible shudder.

They fall, all of them, into the knowledge that red lyrium truly is alive, is a growing, living thing that spreads like wildfire and poison and when they finally reach camp that evening the exhaustion is thick like a fever.

Even so, Evelyn stands inside Thom's tent, still smelling of travel and armour, watching him as he unbuckles the last pieces of his own and sits in front of her in nothing more than his undershirt and a pair of breeches. In the dusk he looks larger, broader, until he takes up all of her vision and all of her attention and he smiles a little when he notices her stare, how little it hides. Maker help her but she finds him so impossible not to want. It hits her now, again, as they have reached a sort of understanding after everything and he no longer feels like a stranger she must approach with caution. It hits her now, _again_ , as he straightens his back, hands on his knees, and just _looks_ at her, with that intense gaze that trickles into her like hot, heavy rain. _This changes nothing,_ she had told herself as she kissed him before they left Skyhold. _This changes nothing_ , but it does, of course it does because this - his skin under her palms, her scent on hip lips, her name like a prayer in his chest and his like a curse in her mind - wraps them so tight together that it eclipses those things they have yet to talk about, that have yet to be expressed and resolved. And she grins at him now thinking _I don't care, I don't care, I don't bloody care_. It's a greed that has no mirror in her memory, that feels odd and new and all-consuming because she doesn't recognise it.

He drags her down over his lap then, in a swift and sudden move that makes her stomach lurch.

"I'm too heavy for this," she mumbles, her lips half-way buried in the incredibly warm expanse of skin along his throat.

"Do you hear me complaining?" he mutters back, hands busy with the task of pressing her closer against him, cupping her arse, grabbing her hips and thighs that are wrapped hard around his waist.

"Too heavy for the chair." She feels out of breath, out of thoughts, empty of everything that isn't here and now.

Thom shifts a little beneath her, reaching up to run his hands through her hair that's still tangled and damp. Battlefield hair, battlefield smells, a layer of steel and iron and sweat in the air between them. "Well, do you hear the chair complaining?"

She laughs a little at that but he covers her mouth with his own so the laughter becomes a muffled groan instead, a plea for more.

 

 

* * *

 

 

They wait for the others outside a ruin after a short pause - a chance to catch their breaths and tend to their slight injuries before they march onwards - and Evelyn slips her arms around him when nobody is watching. Her gloved hands on his chest, her chin resting on his shoulder and he doesn't move, doesn't want to undo the moment.

 

 

* * *

 

 

They steal glimpses of each other, _touches_ , slivers of time that is sworn to other duties:

Her hand on his back, travelling too low for decency and far enough to make him chuckle under his breath.

His gaze across the camp as she looks up, right into him, after having organised her pack or cleaned her sword. The power in it, the bottomless _surge_.

A kiss – quick, quiet – behind a tent as they go about their morning rituals and he misses her ridiculously the moment she steps out of his embrace.

Another kiss – deeper, _frantic_ – when she helps him dress a wound on his upper arm and she sees the length of the injury, sees the ghost of what could have happened. The skin around his wrist pales as her fingertips presses down.

 

* * *

 

 

The water around him is still hot, though the most scorching heat has given way to a more enjoyable one. He leans his head back against the wooden edge, his back pressed flat against the warm tub and there's a sense of relief in sitting here after several days of battles in the snow, on frozen lakes and along icy paths. Injuries and aches, old and new, stretch out over his entire body and at least half of them are mitigated considerably by the water.

He closes his eyes as he hears footfall behind him. There's no question about who it is and that notion carries another sort of relief, one that sits deep within, a comfort for wounds never shown but nonetheless _there_ , a part of him for so long he doesn't remember when they were inflicted. Evelyn's voice is low, sinks down him as effortlessly as he had sunk down into this bath.

"I've asked for spiced wine," she says, and he feels her fingertips in his hair, running softly over his scalp.

Since they took the old elven keep back from the red templars, basic comforts aren't as few and far between any more and Thom can feel himself long for that wine in the same fashion as he longs for the woman who rubs his shoulders with firm, calming motions. A soft moan slips out of him when she hits a sore spot that seems connected to every single tired muscle in his body.  
  
“Spiced wine, eh?” His voice comes off as thick and slow, a rumble in his chest.  
  
Evelyn moves her hands down his arms, his chest, raking over hair and scars. Andraste's tits, it doesn't take much these days, he thinks to himself as he feels himself respond to her closeness. There's been a lot of women before her. Too many, perhaps. But he can't remember it ever being as urgent as this thing between them, this peculiar connection that runs around his heart as well as other, much more prosaic parts. Fingers circling around his stomach now and when she leans over him he feels her large, soft breasts against the back of his head.  
  
“You said you wanted it,” she says, voice soft and low, lingering around the vowels.  
  
“Did I now?” Thom turns his head to look at her and can't refrain from grinning when he notices that she's slipped out of her clothes and stands before him wearing nothing but a cascade of dark curls over her shoulders and back. And the trail of dark curls beneath her navel, he thinks dizzily as he reaches out to brush over it with his thumb, track the path back to its wet, swollen source that taste of salt and milk when he licks his finger. Evelyn groans, inching closer. The bathtub is low enough for him to lean forward only slightly, to slide one arm between her legs to hold her in place and cause her to gasp in surprise as his mouth travel where his thumb went, his tongue marking the path along her soft belly and further down.  
  
One hand in his hair, the other grabbing hold of the edge of the tub and he loves the sight of her like that, loves her undone, loves the mere idea of being able to cause her to make these filthy, wonderful noises.  
  
Loves _her_ , and he feels himself harden as the fingers in his hair tug with a different intensity, in time with her breathing and the way she mutters something – _don't stop, don't stop, don't_ – and pushes into his mouth, back arching. He lets his lower lip rub over the most sensitive part of her body, makes a teasing pattern around it with the tip of his tongue and Evelyn hisses, the hand that keeps her steady holding on for dear life; white knuckles and wet wood.

She comes quickly, loudly, and he feels that flush of pride as she looks down at him with her lips parted and her eyes like dark shadows.  
  
“ _Fuck_.” Her voice is hoarse and tinged with amusement, with satisfaction.  
  
“The water's still warm,” he says.  
  
A second later she has joined him, their bodies meshed together in a deep, slow rhythm that makes him close his eyes and press kisses to her neck, her shoulder, the trail of wet skin between her breasts. She tastes of life there, of a pulse beating wild and free and he kisses it, kisses the endlessly soft skin on the sides and the hard nipples; she tilts her upper body back, giving him more room.  
  
He finds release with her mouth hot and hard against his throat and his hands sprawled over her back and she doesn't move, doesn't let him withdraw until they're both limp and boneless against each other, like a strange twin creature in the cooling water.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
Suledin Keep is utterly still in the cold night and they lay outstretched in her bed – one of the few available and she had not exactly bothered _protesting_ when it was assigned to her – with their bodies calming down and their thundering hearts quieting.  
  
She reaches for the remains of her spiced wine on the bedside table and drinks it slowly, washing away a large meal from before and the rich taste of _him_ in her mouth.  
  
“Stay with me,” she says then, holding his gaze. She isn't certain if it's a question or a command and perhaps it doesn't matter because he merely nods and adjusts himself around her, like a shield or a piece of a puzzle.  
  
They both sleep that night, uninterrupted for once.  
  
  
  
  
  


 


	23. Chapter 23

 

**ideal**  
( _adj_.)  
  
  
There's a softness to the curve of his neck when he sleeps. A softness to all of him, to both of  _them_ , as muscles rest and limbs intertwine and his breathing rise and fall in time with hers, a wordless adjustment to each other.  
  
Evelyn shifts a little against him, her back warm along his chest. He makes a noise, slowly waking up she assumes and it makes her smile. It's the first time they wake up together, the first time they have allowed themselves not to scurry off in the middle of the night because even if everybody knows there  _is_  something reassuring and simple about letting it remain out of sight. She doesn't know anything else and she isn't certain Thom does, either. For all his experience there's a trace of novelty in everything they do, a sense of  _invention_ , of wonder. Her fingers tap softly against his knuckles that, in turn, brush over her belly; his mouth along her hairline, her face turning towards his for a kiss.   
  
"I had a dream about darkspawn," she mumbles when he lets go of her. The thin lines around his eyes are visible in the morning light –  _crow's feet_ , someone said to her once when she was a child and she had found it odd then. Found it harsh but it's  _gentle_ , a bundle of paths crossing lived-in skin.   
  
“Darkspawn?”  
  
She nods and he catches her chin with two fingers, frowning a little. There's concern there mingled with desire and the confusion that always comes with mornings, as though your mind and body are still trying to unite, to  _merge_  after having been free to roam the Fade for hours. In this case there's a first between them, as well, a morning that marks itself as the first in their shared history. Before Val Royeaux, before the broken pieces of his past fell down around them, she had never dared to think about the future because it had tasted of hopelessness and the Calling and death and regardless of how she presents herself, how thick that skin of hers may be, she doesn't care much for despair. They would have enjoyed themselves for the time being, left the future to others and wrapped themselves tight around each other. She would have left him, she thinks now. That is how she had thought about it in her head, how her mind had worked around the situation, weaving fabrics of protective shields around her, trying to prevent her from getting hurt. She would have left him and it would not be a dramatic scene, he would never let her make it a tragedy. Then everything changed and suddenly there's a distinct  _hope_ in the distance even for them, even now. The question is what they are going to _do_ with it but that is not a matter for slow, early mornings.   
  
“Darkspawn?” he asks again, his tone sharper now.   
  
Evelyn observes the bridge of his nose. A small unevenness in it suggests that it has been injured at some point, though not half as badly as her own.   
  
“They were dancing,” she replies because it's true and because she needs to see that frown ease up, needs to see the corners of his mouth twitch the way they always do when he's amused but trying not to laugh outright. “And I do believe there were cookies involved.”  
  
After a beat of surprised silence, Thom chuckles, low in his chest. A rumble through them both. The veil of concern seem to dissolve from his gaze, disappearing inside of him again and when their eyes meet she can see only warmth there. Once, a long time ago now, she had wanted to know everything about the Grey Wardens, about  _him_  as a Grey Warden – the marks it had left on him, the dents it had created in his armour, the way it had shaped and turned his thoughts and dreams, every way in which it had rendered him different. It seems like another life now, seems like the ideas of another being entirely. She's still in there somewhere, however, clutching some half-forgotten image of a man she thought she had loved. Perhaps she will always be there, perhaps _he_ will always be there as a quiet comparison, a weight to be scaled against.   
  
“I had thought you'd be too worn out to dream.” Thom's tone is teasing, his voice thick and hot as it falls into her like nothing else. His bloody  _voice_ , she thinks at times, there is nothing quite like it. Nothing quite like it when he morphs it into teasing _filth_ or when he laughs or when he tells her long-winded stories of soldier life that are more amusing to him than they are to her but she listens anyway because of the light in his eyes then, the fire in his face.   
  
"Speak for yourself." Evelyn grins, momentarily catching his lower lip between her teeth. “ _I'm_ young and spry.”  
  
“One of your numerous advantages over me, my lady.”  
  
His mouth finds hers again, the palm of his hand travelling down her spine with a clear purpose and she wraps her leg over his waist, pushing away every fragment of everything else in her mind.   
  
  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
**idiosyncrasies**  
( _noun_ )  
  
The way he wrings his hands – seemingly without thinking, a motion hammered into his very bones – every time she asks about his past because he nurses the secrets of his heart and soul even more fiercely than he had ever nursed the secret about his crimes.   
  
Her ability to brush off compliments, kisses and confessions of adoration as easily as she brushes off a round of sword practice with new recruits or a cut from an enemy dagger.  She smiles but he can tell that there's nothing in her that wholeheartedly believes him.   
  
His forgetfulness when it comes to caring for himself, in sharp contrast to how diligently he tends to his weapons and armour.   
  
The way she hardens, bit by bit, day by day, as the war rages on and the numbers – living, dead, missing - pile up around them. And the way she hides it, fear burning in her eyes, by kneeling beside a wounded to say a prayer, giving a loaf of bread to a homeless beggar, handing out her last restorative potion to a woman in a village they pass on their way back to camp. He has never felt closer to her; neither of them can find words to speak of _that_.

 

 


	24. Chapter 24

  
  
**joy  
** _(noun)_  
  
  
She's ten and on the run from her dance lessons, Anne in tow – older but smaller, less clumsy and with her breath catching in her throat and her mouth full of thick protests. _Mother said we had to, she did say so, Evie;_ the keep is an endless maze and the shadows are ghosts and fairy tales for a little while longer, for another summer. The shadows are _ghosts_ and the kitchen is full of treats that melt in their skirts before they reach the low slumped roof outside the servant's entrance where they sit, hidden in plain sight. Shoulder to shoulder, sharing their stolen treats with the precise fairness of siblings, measuring everything carefully, sharing their hushed-up laughter and quiet triumph. Shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, secret to secret as Anne leans forward and shows, with teeth clenched around the fear and shame, the smoke rising from her palm.   
  
That autumn Anne leaves home to never return but it's still summer and the ghosts are merely their own shadows.   
  
  
\--  
  
  
He's seven, perhaps older, and Liddy is a fat little bundle wrapped up in blankets to ward her against the oncoming winter. Their house is warm but never warm enough, unless you sit by the fire. So they do. He sits there with her while their parents are outside or down by the marketplace and his mother has told him what to do if Liddy starts crying or chew on her chubby hands – there is milk by the window and clean wraps and _you're my big boy, Thom, I trust you_. There's a weight in her words but a _good_ weight; he feels brave and he's never brave, never around the other children but this is Liddy and she makes a strange throaty sound when he looks at her, grabs hold of his finger and pulls it and when he cries out a little in surprise she blinks as though she's going to cry but instead she grins, wide and toothless and he has to grin, too.   
  
  
–-  
  
  
She's seventeen and the dress fits for once, swirling around her legs like warm waves as Lord Levin's heir moves them both over the half-empty dance floor. He doesn't find her beautiful, she can tell from the way his gaze falls just slightly to the side, but he smiles at her in front of her mother and his hands are as firm and smooth as his voice.   
  
She's twenty-one and blind drunk, leaning across a table in a templar tavern with Brienna by her side, still telling her the same lewd, absurd tale that makes them both howl with laughter. Tears are forming in her eyes and she reaches for the wine, downing it like water until the room spins even further but it doesn't matter because they are all made of light, light stars.   
  
She's twenty-eight and sits cross-legged in Suledin Keep, trying not to think about the nature of red lyrium, keeping the terror at bay by listening to Iron Bull and Sera's humorous attempts at working out a new battle strategy with the help of Thom. Their voices are loud but not loud enough for her to hear everything and the words she catches rise like clouds, like smoke, fragments of a life she could never have imagined for herself but now that she has it, it's part of her like the breath in her lungs. It hits her, fast and hard, a happiness forever entangled with pain. _This, I cannot stand to lose._    
  
  
\---  
  
  
  
He's eighteen and there's a lingering taste of blood – his own blood - in his mouth even as the sun sets on the final day of the Grand Tourney but he feels like it can never truly set, not on him.   
  
He's twenty-three, with a recent promotion and a hand on his shoulder, _excellent job, Rainier, you impress me_ like an imprint at the surface of his mind. It overshadows the things that are usually there, erases the man he could never be and the man he wanted to become, promising him, if only for a brief moment, the chance to find a way _out_. __  
  
He's forty-seven and on his knees inside a crowded tent in a region so cold his fucking balls freeze, laughing so hard he cannot breathe. Sera's sprawled in a corner and Evelyn's beside him, shaking her head but laughing, too, mouth pressed into the bend of her arm.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
**juxtapose  
** _(verb)_  
  
  
His sword-arm behind her own somewhere out in the Hinterlands, showing her a motion that is not yet fluent in her bones; there's a respectable, suitable distance but even so she knows every inch of the space between her back and his belly, every meaning of it. If she turns her head now he'd be close enough for a kiss.   
  
Her unconscious frame in his arms in a dank cave along the Storm Coast, he can hear his own exhausted heartbeats in his head and her shallow breaths - when he manages to hear them in the surrounding noise - like hammer blows to his heart.   
  
Their nest of arms and legs under the heavy blanket in the stables that night before everything changes. His knees pressing into her thighs, her elbow in the coarse hair of his chest, their arms a puzzle and a chain and _I apologise for the lack of a proper bed, my lady_. She smiles into his open mouth, her fingers exploring the back of his neck, the long line of his back. _We'll do better next time_ , she says and pretends not to feel him tense around her.   
  
The shape of their bodies on the sheets – big, broad outlines, tall and rounded, stretched-out like shadows in the dusk – as they rise together in the early dawn. She watches it over her shoulder and it nearly makes her wish the servants would leave it alone, refrain from touching the marks they've made on the world around them.   
  
  
  
  
  



	25. Chapter 25

**  
  
keepsake  
** ( _noun_ )

 

  
He makes it outside Crestwood, where the birches are tormented by the wind and sea and the ghosts of a past that cannot remain hidden. The wood is supple, smells of bitterly sweet sap and salty waves. In his hands the pale tree becomes a cup for water and broth, for ale and tea in the evenings and he spends a long time perfecting the rim, smoothing out its edges.   
  
Then the Lady Inquisitor comes barging into the camp with the Qunari and Sera and a trail full of blood and mud and Thom jumps to his feet, throwing the nearly-finished cup on the ground among the rest of his belongings. Later, much later and with fresh wounds outlining his old scars, he polishes it one last time.   
  
It's a cup. A silly bloody thing, meant as a gift but shrinking or growing into something absurd –  _you're on my mind; you mean a lot_ \- in the turmoil around them.   
  
  
\--  
  
  
He makes it outside Crestwood and leaves it in his pack for later, a later that turns into  _months_.   
  
When she finally holds it for the first time he almost regrets making it.   
  
It looks ill-fitted in her hands that curve around the wood, seems out of place. Her eyebrows are arched and her mouth is smiling as she observes the gift carefully, the pad of her thumb running in circles over the surface. Her  _hands_ , Thom thinks, red and frayed from the cold here, calloused after years of hard living. Back in Haven when she was a figment of his imagination he had always assumed her touch to be gentle, like cool, soft fabric or a gust of wind. It's a delusional man's thoughts, of course, he knows no soldier can be soft and tender like that, knows that anyone who  _is_  will meet a grim fate. He isn't sure why he would even want it, what he would do with that kind of woman. But it had been early then, so very early between them, and he had allowed himself his illusions.   
  
“Thank you,” she says, voice softer than her touch could ever be.   
  
Later he watches her drink wine from the cup – big mouthfuls, always in a hurry when she eats and drinks, wiping stray drops and rivulets from her mouth with the back of her hand – and it brings a smile to his lips.   
  
  


* * *

 

 

 

 **keystone  
** ( _noun_ )

 

In the cold that is so thick and deep that is feels like fire under your skin, Evelyn falls in battle and her blood makes long, terrifying patterns on the snow around her.

Thom can't bring himself to leave her side, despite the enemies outside their gates; he had never been able to drag himself away from Liddy's death, either. Part of him is still there, bargaining to take her place.

It feels small, somehow, to think of how it looms over him, even now. As though he's still that silly little boy by the bedside with a head full of questions and thoughts running counter to reason and knowledge, endless streams twitching and leaping at the mere notion of something happening in his sister's face even if it had just been a shadow crossing it, passing by.

It feels enormous, like a blow, to think of how much it matters to him that this woman lives and breathes. No words would encompass it; he sits by her bedside for two nights without falling asleep, sits there until his eyes are sore and his hands shake over the blanket, his fingers like trembling ghosts.

 _Don't make a fuss_  she had muttered as she slipped away, out there on the ground with him kneeling beside her and Sera cursing in his ear.  _Bloody buggery shit-faces._

 _Don't make a fuss._ He wonders how it would be possible not to.

 

 

*  


 

She grows up fractured, the way some children do.  _The wild ones_ , her grandfather says as her mother looks away, lips pursed.

The wild one.

Battered and bruised and healed, eventually. Bones that snap in the wild games of childhood, a tooth that gets chipped from biting down on stone, scars and scratches across thighs and knees and feet, a nose that breaks when she's thrown off a horse and cannot leave her room for the rest of that summer and never goes near the stables again. A full continent of injuries, spread out over one child's body. Her grandfather would sit by her bed when she woke up from that thick sort of sleep that only restorative draughts can offer, his face serious but never without that little trace of pride in his eyes, that thread of familiarity between them. _Don't let them get to you, lass._

She'd find him somewhere inside the Fade, inside those flimsy shades and vibrant dreams that belong to sleep and illness. She'd find him and hold on to him, wrap her mind around the notion of him somewhere in there, somewhere nearby. They say a strong enough bond can cross the veils and borders, they write ballads and stories about it; they speak of purity of mind and heart, of a noble light that never goes out. It's mostly sentimental speculation, of course. Even so.

"Evelyn." The voice that reaches her now is deeper than grandfather's - a voice that grows from the shadows within, made of gravelly bones and dark secrets, nothing pure about it - and more devastating.

" _Thom_ ," she mumbles, because her body knows his name even if her mind forgets.

It's not until she's in his arms and his mouth breathes relief into the feverish skin on the side of her throat that she realises he hadn't called her 'my lady' and she presses into his embrace: tighter,  _nearer_.

 

 


	26. Chapter 26

  
  
**labour  
**_(verb)_  
  
  
He's bleeding from an injury – a fist, hard and unrelenting and well-placed – above his right eye. _Sodding Rainier, shut your filthy mouth._ His tongue is swollen, almost _itching_ , and his lower lip has split slightly, which makes blood trickle down his throat. It tastes like metal and earth.  
  
Now as the sun has set and dusk covers them all, Thom barely recalls what it had been about, the fighting. _He's the son of an Orlesian whore, doesn't know better._ The laughter had been subdued because they know his hands are full of anger and his temper runs wild, but laughter all the same and he had snapped. Recently, as his body grows tall and wide and narrow all at once and his chest soars with impulses, he finds that it's so easy to just _snap_. Like a twig on the bloody ground.  
  
  
–--  
  
  
The sharp taste of blood still in his mouth as he struggles towards his assigned bedroll. Blood and dirt and sweat, piling up at his feet that ache furiously with each step he takes. _You cocky little shit. Learn to block._ His captain's words echo against the injuries and he bites down hard over replies never spoken. It doesn't matter that he's joined the most powerful military in southern Thedas, doesn't matter that he's learned _yes, ser_ and how to nod curtly and swallow insults that taste thick and bitter at the back of his tongue, the shape of him is still Thom Rainier, the drunken arrogant Marcher. _  
  
_ In his life, change has never come of itself so he swears, between listening to his own laboured breaths and his fellow soldiers' heavy snoring, that he will see to it. _Force_ it.  
  
  
–--  
  
  
“Don't squirm, Romey.”  
  
“Sorry, sir.”  
  
“You're the one who'll be sorry.” Thom finishes cleaning the angry red outlines of a large gash on his recruit's left arm. “If you get this paste all over you. Burns like bloody flames.”  
  
Around them, a few other new recruits stand gaping, as though they can't quite believe what they witness. It's Thom's first time travelling with his men as a commanding officer in the Imperial Army - _their_ commanding officer – and he finds himself observed at every corner, between each word he speaks. As it should be, he supposes. He is no longer one of the lads; he's a little surprised to find that he misses it, the simplicity in having no expectations to your name, no promises to keep beyond raising your sword on someone else's order but it's not enough for regrets.  
  
He rises, slow and painstaking, inch by inch, but he _rises_ and perhaps in another handful of years his name might not be one to be dismissed with a wave of a hand.  
  
  
  
–--  
  
  
  
Blood in rivulets down his cheek and between his knuckles, but the wine keeps the pain away. Sweet, spiced wine like a low chant in his blood, the only thing that dulls his senses enough to grant forgetfulness, a moment's _peace_.  
  
“What do you do when you don't fight your way through taverns?” A man's voice, low and deep and not hostile enough for Thom to look up from his drained goblet. Had he not asked the serving wench for more?   
  
“You care about my personal affairs?” he mutters when the man doesn't go away. He still doesn't look up. Perhaps it's shame, perhaps he hasn't reached a point beyond it just yet. _Give me another year like this one and we'll see about that.  
  
_ “I might.”  
  
A chuckle, humourless and _raw_ , rises in Thom's chest. “Wretched sod.”  
  
  
  
–--  
  
  
  
The sharp taste of blood, again, as he leans his forehead against the damp stone in his cell.  
  
Out of sight the guard that led him away from the gallows had shoved him down onto the ground, a boot on his back and the edge of a sword against his bared neck. _No one can run forever, Rainier._  
  
Out of sight, they had finally found him and he had recognised the mad glint in their eyes, the furious delight in seeing him fall. The butcher, the traitor, the one who let his men get executed one after the other.  
  
Later, before they lock him up, an armour-clad hand splitting his eyebrow. Another right below his ribs, a boot kicking the breath from his lungs for just a moment.  
  
Thom doesn't fight back.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
**loveable  
**_(adj.)_  
  
His arms around her when she stirs and he’s already awake, as if he’s there to welcome her; his casual gentleness and his passionate one; the way he reads boring scout reports to her because he knows the task exhausts her; his voice when they are alone; his strength and how he uses it; the scent of his skin as if he’s made solely from steel and sun and wood; his mind that is sharper than he knows, more learned than he thinks; the way he wants to be a better man, unapologetically; his experience and how he sometimes tries to hide it from her, as though it makes him self-conscious; his experience and how he sometimes reduces her to a wordless, boneless _wreck_ with it; the way he rubs his forehead against hers, lightly, just before they kiss; his courage; his cowardice; his soul.  
  
  
–--

Her stubborn refusal to let anyone diminish her; her ever-fascinating skill with a blade and her knack for survival; the angry frown on her face when she reads; the way she says “oh, it’s _you_ ”, her voice landing heavy and happy on the last word; her independence; her straight-faced amusement when Sera loses herself in a bawdy tale; the habit of taking a cup of tea with her to her bedchamber, only to leave it untouched on desks, tables, window sills; her lack of discipline and her endless faith; how she reaches for him whenever he’s near, as if he cannot be close _enough_ ; her principles and how _confidently_ she overlooks them; the thick scar across her face - to kiss it and see the look in her eyes afterwards; her body; her mind; her heart.

 

 


	27. Chapter 27

  
  
  
  
**machinations**  
( _noun_ )  
  
  
The way they spend so much of their time signing orders and pompously written letters - _but war is waged on every front, Inquisitor_ , Josephine reminds her if she groans too much and she does, even after all this time - to pull the strings around them, make the spider's web tighter as they pray to the Maker to preserve them all. Even Evelyn prays now, the words strange in her mouth. _Maker, guide me._ She knows Cassandra and Leliana do, probably Cullen as well. It's approaching, that end they know nothing about.  
  
(She knows Thom prays, knows his prayers are more like curses, dark and furious. _Maker, let her live.)_

 

  
\---

 

  
The way his eyes darken - hastily, before he has time to turn away because she knows he doesn't want her to see him worry like that, as though he's doubting her - whenever they discuss the plans they have made for defeating Corypheus. Their inherent grief, the terror in plotting the course for death because it's the only option they have, the only thing this war has ever brought. Death and scars from the Fade itself, all around them and on her skin.

Nobody mentions her mark these days. In the beginning she spoke of it a great deal, had it examined and tended to and now it's rarely even mentioned. Perhaps, she thinks to herself as she scratches her nails around its uneven, uncharted outlines, it's because they all think it will be the death of her. 

(Thom's fingers forming barriers around the faint green glow, rough skin and scars like shields from powers that rival everything in the world and beyond; she feels his grip around her tighten, wakes up sometimes in the middle of the night to find his arms wrapped so hard and heavy around her that she struggles to breathe.)  
  
  
  
–--  
  
  
  
The way she collects letters, contracts, written orders in her private chamber and takes them out sometimes, spreads them across her already messy desk like a child spreads her personal collections. To bask in it.  
  
All these people, she tells herself. All these people are fighting for the same cause as her, are upholding the same order, sworn to the same causes. It speaks to her those nights when she can't sleep. It tells her reassuring lies and soft consolations, says _we will finish if you cannot_ and she can go back to sleep then, knowing she is not the end of it.   
  
(“If I should die-”  
  
He turns away from her then, shaking his head.  
  
“You won't die. I won't allow it.”)  
  
  
  
  


* * *

 

 

  
**meander**  
(verb)  
  
  
When spring tries to break through the faint grasp of winter and the ground slowly heats up beneath their feet, Thom takes her fishing like he once promised to. Evelyn walks beside him, a pack slung over her shoulder and her hunting bow strapped to her back – he's brought his shield and sword and it makes something lurch in her stomach, something dark and warm and just a little bit _sad_. The world sharpens around them, grinds them down. Soon all that is left is constant vigilance and a fear of strangers.  
  
“You look troubled already, my lady. Regrets?”  
  
Evelyn blinks, gazing out over the calm lake in front of her and at Thom who has come to a halt, reaching for his backpack. Apparently this might be a good spot for some fishing. She can't claim to know anything about it, doesn't think anyone in her family has ever gone fishing and there had been a shade of irritation in Thom's expression when she had told him. _You're nobility, my lady._ Always that edge to it; she is never quite sure if it's directed towards her or him or them both.  
  
_We are what we are, Captain Thom Rainier._  
  
“None,” she replies and leans down to examine the rods he's brought – and _made_ , she gathers. There's something about that, something sturdy that she finds so impossibly appealing in him. Perhaps because it's nothing like her past, nothing like her lineage, that tapestry of well-bred lords arguing over cows and articulated ladies summoning armies to their spring feasts. Perhaps it's more prosaic than that, a base need at the bottom of her belly as she watches him work with his hands, watches _him:_ big and broad and surprisingly _quick_ despite his size, as though his skill outweighs any advantages.  
  
They fish for a while – a _long_ while according to her but she has always been easy to bore and nature is lost on her, its beauty pointless – and say very little. That much she knows about this task, at least. It's a silent one.  
  
He looks so peaceful where he stands, Evelyn thinks and can't help but glance in his direction more than she observes any potential fish taking her bait. Peaceful and relaxed, in a way that she can't remember seeing him before. Ever since they met he's been reining himself in, composing himself behind his masks and constrictions, his entire universe of self-imposed punishments. They vanish on occasion – in her arms and behind closed doors, or when he thinks nobody is watching and he sort of exhales, his body relenting with a gasp – but return, reinforced.  
  
_You should have a bad influence on Blackwall as well_ , Evelyn had told the Iron Bull once, blind-drunk and hungry for everything. _Not just on me._ _That man needs an indulgence._  
  
Bull had laughed, dismissively, the way he does when he doesn't want to share his insights because he doesn't think it's his place or his business or anything he ought to know _a flying fuck about, Boss_. Later, when Blackwall is Thom and nothing is the same, she understands that she's been the indulgence all along and she can't tell if it's a compliment or not.  
  
It's also entirely possible, she thinks as Thom rakes a hand through his hair and meets her gaze, that she doesn't give a damn what they are to each other as long as they are _this_.  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
**melting point**  
( _noun_ )  
  
  
“Did you have a family?” She asks him this once, in a half-empty inn in the Hinterlands, thinking as the question leaves her mouth that it's an odd thing to ask but everything is odd now and he's a Grey Warden and she knows very little about them but she does know that they give up their previous lives for their Order. He doesn't seem like a man who does that; it doesn't seem to be in his blood.  
  
Blackwall doesn't look at her when he answers.  
  
“No,” he says levelly. “I did not.”  
  
  
–--  
  
  
“Did you have a family?”  
  
She asks him this again in front of a fireplace in Suledin Keep, thinking as she question leaves her mouth that she should have asked this months earlier, should have known the moment she came to visit him after his trial at Skyhold, the moment she fell back into his arms. But she has not asked because she has not wanted to know. Sometimes in her head she sees those images so vividly: a pretty girl, short and fair and slender - the type of woman you take in your arms and raise to the skies, the type of woman who is smiles and softness, a warm whisper in the night; children, running around playing outside a modest home; a life lived, a life without her. It's childish to envy him for it; she does it until she runs out of breath.  
  
“No,” he says, softly. His eyes are fixed on her, his gaze has no _end_. “I've never been suited to that kind of life. Maybe I don't deserve it. And I've never found someone I wanted to stay with.”  
  
The fire burns and Evelyn with it as she turns her head until they are so close she can feel Thom's breaths on her cheek, the tip of his nose against her own.  
  
“And now?” Her voice is a ghost, an exhale.  
  
Something shifts in his face, a gentleness that takes over it. “Do you even have to ask?”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	28. Chapter 28

  
  
**nadir**  
( _noun_ )  
  
  
The letter in her hand weighs like a war hammer, weighs like an iron sword and a hundred arrows twisted around themselves. It's a hollow inside her bones, a vast black hole where _she_ ought to be.   
  
_Disciplinary actions required_. She purses her lips. _My dear friend Lord Trevelyan_. That creak in her chest again, like heavy boots on fragile wood. _Your lovely mother shall be most unhappy to learn this._   
  
Her father who sends her to the Templars with that weary glint in his eyes, the light that seems less bright for every time he looks at her, as though it's finally on its way to disappear entirely. It would not be surprising; she has never lived up to anyone's expectations.   
  
Her mother who sends her to the Templars with relief and regret, perhaps even guilt though she would never admit such a thing and Evelyn would never prod. Unspoken things are meant to remain unspoken. It hurts less that way.   
  
She rolls the letter to a tight, tight knot - an exclamation mark or a weapon, or merely a useless thing made of paper. Opens it again, smoothing our the crinkles with her palms that are sweaty and cold at the same time, sticking to the parchment.   
  
Later, she watches it crumble to ashes in a tavern not far from Ostwick.   
  
“We're closing.” The barmaid stands two feet away, in front of her and next to the fireplace that still burns the last words to shreds.   
  
Evelyn looks up, nods. “I'm leaving.”  
  
As she is, the question soars through the air, brushing past her.   
  
“Aren't you one of the Trevelyans from the city?”  
  
She scrapes some almost-faded ink from her left palm; she thinks of orchards and laughter, of Anne and bruises that would sometimes look like apples or pears, thinks of grandfather and his hands, those hands that had _no practicality whatsoever, dear_ but held the world; she thinks of growing up, growing out, bursting through everything that ever surrounded her and the endless, quiet sorrow in rebellion.   
  
“No.” She shakes her head. It feels strangely heavy, stuck in old motions. “You must have mistaken me for someone else.”  
  
  
  
–--  
  
  
  
He's always found rocks and stone oddly relaxing. To be surrounded by it, the impenetrable, indestructible core of nature, its strongest and weakest spot. Strong because it doesn't falter, weak because it doesn't change. It has to be worn down, eroded to dust and he feels like a rock himself, hopeless and heavy in his steps on the wretched fucking road he's chosen for himself.   
  
Last night by the fire he had told Blackwall. He's found himself talk a lot on this journey, not because he necessarily thinks the other man is interested in his thoughts or because he wants to hear Blackwall's, but silence cuts deep into your mind after entirely too much of it, all these words that never get said pile up like old wounds inside.   
  
He talks to _survive_. _Why do you keep fighting to survive? What do you have to live for?_  
  
“Maybe you are part dwarf then,” the Warden had said, had sounded amused as he poked around in his fish stew.   
  
Now he's silent on the ground in a dank cave and Thom sits with his back against cool, cold stone and stares at the blood on his own hands. It has dried, formed a second skin.   
  
He could remain here with the corpse. Just sit here, back straight and eyes closed and wait for the darkspawn to return like darkspawn always do, wait for his injuries to grow infected, to burn him up and tear him down. Callier's children will wait with him. Callier's wife, the way her neck was bared in death. The servants, on their knees with their hands outstretched to show they had no swords or knives, begging for mercy.   
  
Thom will not be lonely here.   
  
When dawn comes, Thom is finally dead. All that is left of him – a knife he's had since he was a boy with a hilt his father made for him for his tenth birthday, a worn leather bag he bought in Ostwick one warm spring afternoon when he owned all of southern Thedas and could do _anything_ , a silver coin, an often-repaired book that has a collection of his sister's hard, uneven letters scribbled on the first page, she never had time to learn how to write properly – rest in a cave that is so small and so insignificant it's not even on the maps. They are humble belongings, could be anybody's.   
  
He works slowly, methodically. Removing himself bit by bit as he takes Blackwall's armour off his dead body, wipes it clean and dry, takes the sword and he shield and tries to move with them, within these new borders he's set for himself.   
  
When dawn comes, he leaves the cave.   
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
**naked**  
( _adj_ )  
  
  
  
At first when it seems Blackwall doesn't _see_ her even if her advances are clumsy and wide-open, her heart on her sleeve like never before. Or perhaps it is exactly because of this.   
  
She closes her eyes to reality in her bed at night and wills her hands to be his while Haven quietly rages on outside her little window. There's a thin, fragile sort of air out there tonight, echoes of a life she thought she had left behind.   
  
She learns early in life that she is not the kind of girl a man will want to dance with, not the kind of girl a man wants to have by his side and present to the world as his wife. She's too ugly for that, too square and peculiar and introverted. Says the wrong things, missteps on the dance floor, eats too much and too loudly. _A lady must possess certain qualities, Evelyn_ and she has nothing. The Trevelyans are not even wealthy enough for her to be considered beautiful by default.   
  
The boys she grows up with, the boys who shape her and let her shape them in return: hot hands sliding up along the inner of her thighs, wet lips on her breasts and belly, her fingers inside a pair of trousers that have become too tight very quickly, kisses like fire, like madness, always kisses in the shadows and abandoned barns where Fat Thomas moves inside her for the first time and she thinks _yes, yes, like this_.   
  
She learns early in life to be the kind of girl a man wants to fuck, at least. The kind of girl who _wants_.   
  
  
–--  
  
  
At first, when he presses her up against the wall as they kiss, feverishly, clawing at the surface like drowning men at sea and he wonders if that's not what they are, after all.   
  
But he's devoted so much time and effort now, has almost erased the cocky fool from Markham from his being and carved him out of his heart so he disentangles himself with a sigh, steps away before he's torn her clothes off and had her on the floor, made her sink down over him like a warm, wet blanket.   
  
Thom Rainier has fucked his way through the Free Marches, has wasted a whole sodding fortune on wine and women but he's not Thom, he's _Blackwall_ and the chains of that name are unrelenting, forming a kind of freedom and a prison all at once.   
  
Lady Evelyn Trevelyan and once, as another man, he would have found her a _challenge_ , would have taken pride in feeling her body beneath his own, in reducing the noblewoman to an animal just like him. Would have taken ridiculous _pride_ in tasting her at the back of his tongue afterwards, a secret pleasant enough to harden him again, in her absence.   
  
“I'm sorry,” he mutters now but he isn't certain he is, that he should be.   
  
She doesn't say anything as he leaves as quickly as he entered; there's a shadow over her face, a familiar sort of disappointment.   
  
  
–--  
  
  
At times she wonders what he was before.   
  
Not a chaste man, certainly. His hands are strong and certain, his motions like deep, heavy breaths through his body. She knows he wants her – or someone who is almost like her, _anyone_ \- and sometimes this is enough but she's always been greedy.   
  
  
–--  
  
  
At times he wonders what she was before.   
  
Not too often, to be quite honest, he doesn't have a vivid imagination and doesn't really want to _know_. All those little details of her, part of him wishes they'd remain a mystery. He fears nothing; he is afraid of truths in himself, in others.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
She's breathless against him, legs shaking and arms trembling and he chuckles softly against her skin, thinking he had been an idiot worrying that he would be her first. It's a light-hearted, warm sort of relief flooding his entire body now when he knows that he hadn't been, knows that there is at least one flavour of guilt he doesn't have to adopt, a shame for which there is no need to make more room in his chest. _You should be nobody's first, Rainier._  
  
“Maker's _breath_ ,” he mutters to her throat and ribcage, to the expanses of scarred skin. Did he once thought her plain and unattractive, too sullen? It seems like another man, another life. “You are truly wonderful.”  
  
Her smile then, branded into his memory as he rides to Val Royeaux and his final, very last death.   
  
  
–--  
  
  
He's still sweaty beside her, his chest heaving up and down and she smirks at the memory of surprise in his gaze, that little trace of wonder. _Told you I'm no innocent maiden, Warden Blackwall_. Had he preferred it if she was? She shrugs away the question, decides it doesn't matter.   
  
“Get some rest,” he says now, voice rough and dry in the still-warm night air.   
  
She has no words left so she merely grunts something on the verge of sleep and for a second he's right there with her, is looking straight at her and she _sees_ him suddenly, all of him exposed for less than a heartbeat before she closes her eyes, her heart. Braces herself for the depths of grief that seem written into him.   
  
He's gone by dawn and she isn't surprised though she almost wishes she was.   
  
  
  
–--  
  
  
And then he's in her bedchamber, is Thom Rainier and nothing worth having but she wants him anyway.  
  
Around them the world darkens and she darkens with it, the bright light fading into grey before his eyes but he forces himself to not look away, to walk another step towards her where she stands in the dimly lit room. She's wearing a nightdress and it's not until he sees it that he realises he's woken her from her sleep. Pangs of guilt, like flames and whispers but he blinks, shakes his head.   
  
Evelyn looks at him for a long time without saying anything. Her right shoulder is bare; he can see the outlines of her body through the fabric of her dress and he thinks of all the women he's seen like this and yet _nothing_ like this.   
  
All the women in Thedas and then there's her, a stubborn noblewoman built like a bull and with a heart that beats hard and fast, hands full of goodness and power, a head full of complicated twists and turns and so far above him that he has to grind his teeth ever time she pretends this is not the case. She is careful and closed-off and difficult to love; he loves her with no second thought, no regrets, like a truth in his own body, a quiet roar.   
  
He used to be young like her, younger and in better shape and with less grey marking him but he's never been stronger than he is now, here. This, at least, he can offer her.   
  
  
\--–  
  
  
  
And the he's in her bedchamber, is Thom Rainier and nothing else and looks at her like he's seeing her for the first time.   
  
She holds out her hand for him.   
  



	29. Chapter 29

  
**nobility**  
( _noun_ )  
  
  
  
  
Markham has no lords and ladies. Not that he knows of, at any rate, but then again his life is far away from frilly skirts and rose-scented handkerchiefs. He's a boy, raised to help out where he's needed and shut up when he's not.  
  
Sometimes there are nobles passing through the wiry little streets with the holes and weed and Thom watches the hatred in his father's eyes then, the closed-off anger in his mother's voice as they speak of the visits, the preparations. Once, the ones who have money and decide these things deem one of the passages to the main road _dangerous, in need of immediate care_. The miller has said the same thing for years, for as long as Thom's father can remember. A fortnight after they finish the work, three Orlesian lords pass by with chevaliers and servants in tow. _They can repair our bridge for the bloody Orlesians but not for us. Fucking bastards._  
  
Sometimes they are gracious enough to stop by the little marketplace by the chantry, noble enough to offer some coin in exchange for wares they hardly need. This, Thom learns that hot summer when he's twelve and the farmers' crop burn and rot in the fields around them, is a gift to be treasured.  
  
It's the old fishermen and their wives standing by the water, rubbing dirt from their shoes even though they know the stench of fish and salt water can never come off.  
  
It's in his mother's bowed head, the way the nape of her neck is bared as she lowers her gaze; her skin is tanned and dry, full of things that mark her. She used to be beautiful, his mother. Everyone tells him this in a sort of reassuring tone. As though she at least had that, once.  
  
Now she's merely old and weary – _bloody exhausted, Thomas, some of us has to put food on the table_ – and bows her head before a noblewoman who's inspecting their wares with the face of someone who is evaluating everything, appreciating nothing.  
  
“My lady. It's the finest quality.” Thom _hates_ his mother's voice, hates how it falls thin and broken and almost shatters before it has reached the air. Hates what it makes her, what it reduces her to. “Hand-made from-”  
  
“There's a stain there,” the noblewoman cuts her off and a jolt of fire runs through Thom as he watches her face then, that visible smirk and the distance in her eyes, like she's barely even here at all. Like she's pretending not to be standing here with a dirty commoner and catch her diseases – filth, poverty, _guilt_. His hands are hard fists in his pockets, his teeth ache from pressing so hard against each other.  
  
And his mother says nothing more, doesn't speak for the rest of the day.

Her shame hardens around his heart, his hands.  
  
  
–--  
  
  
Markham has its lords and ladies but he doesn't waste a single thought on them tonight, when he has returned with his hands full of coin and his swordarm full of tempered, unmatched strength.  
  
Tonight he _is_ someone as he throws his silver coin on the table and another one at the tavern girl – for having such a pretty smile, he says because she would slap him if he told her it's because of her tits. She gives him a tired nod that doesn't fit his mood but it doesn't matter, the world is full of women, full of _life_.  
  
He walks past the narrow roads of the downtrodden, beyond roofs in need of repair and doors that are about to fall off their hinges and this squalor may be part of him but he's no longer a part of it, pushes himself out of Markham with every step.  
  
  
  
–--  
  
  
Markham burns in his throat in Orlais, in the extravagant halls where the absurdly wealthy lead out their entire lives without ever crossing path with anyone less fortunate – save the servants, of course, but they are nameless, faceless in their masks and the soldiers are mere bodies, clad in armour.  
  
He learns, gradually, how to pass. Learns to cover up his flaws and draw very little attention to all the things he lacks (upbringing, manners, money, wit) and underline what few advantages he is in possession of (a respectable position, a sense of humour, a general lack of morals). Learns to not care because there is nothing less dignified than wanting something, _anything_. That proves to be the hardest task – at heart he's a pathetic, needy man, a man who wants wine and women and money and adventure, wants to be admired, respected, to belong – and _an oaf is an oaf even in fancy formal wear, Rainier_ , but eventually he learns to mask that, too.  
  
The noblewomen in his arms in these extravagant halls, then later in darker rooms upstairs or in carriages going nowhere. The words that come out of their mouths – crude words, dripping with filth and desire, with dark, base needs that almost shock him the first time he hears them. They want corruption and danger, wants to feel dirty and he is.  
  
The noblewomen in his arms and he never forgets the way they had looked at his mother, the way they had avoided his father, the way their eyes have a shade of disdain even now, _here_ , as he fucks them until they come undone around him, their voices breaking as they speak.  
  
The noblewomen in his arms and their lords forming impenetrable circles downstairs in their offices and war rooms. Most of them never learns the name of someone who isn't a Chevalier, never even looks someone like Thom in the eye. Not like their wives when he fucks them in the marital bed, thinking of Markham and of shame, the stains that never come off.  
  
He never lets himself forget that he despises them all.  
  
  
\--–  
  
  
Markham is a quiet memory at the back of his mind even in Haven, perhaps _especially_ in Haven.  
  
Here Thom hides his shame behind a heavy shield and an attempt at living as someone else, someone who has never belonged to crowded little cottages or streets that smell of fish and shit, someone who has never reached for the bloody stars and ended up a monster.  
  
Here he feels misplaced, out of his depth as the war room fills up with the high-born and the high-ranking and he aids the blacksmiths outside, reminding himself to know his place for once in his wretched life.  
  
And then he looks a moment too long into the Lady Herald's wide-open eyes and _shatters_.  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
For a long time, Evelyn doesn't understand how her playmates by the river are different. How _she's_ different. They are all scraped knees and questions that are too big for words, dirty hands and bare feet that they cool in the water after a day of running, climbing, fighting. She learns her lessons in the harshest ways, pays for them in blows and defeats but she learns. Eventually she _learns_.  
  
They are all wooden swords and running competitions along the beach but her body belongs to another world, another life.  
  
In the bright rooms of the keep her bruises and blisters chafe against the silk, against the polished surfaces and unbloodied glass; _we will make a lady of you yet_ , but she can't help thinking it will _kill_ her.  
  
  
–--  
  
  
For a long time, she doesn't understand that the cage around her is invisible, that it might not even exist at all.  
  
“You're nobody's _heir_ ,” her brother points out once, over half a bottle of wine and stolen treats from an endless family feast in Kirkwall's high town. “Which is certainly for the best, but still. Don't whine. It's just unseemly.”  
  
“Don't be _rude_.” Evelyn frowns and gulps down a large bite of sugar-coated apple before she takes her turn with the bottle. The green glass is stained with their fingerprints and traces of both baked potatoes and cake.  
  
_You still have your freedom_ , Anne says – _whispers_ , her gaze averted – the morning before the Templars come.  
  
The following summer they come for Evelyn, too, but for different reasons and for the first time in her life she feels her freedom in her chest, hard and heavy and undeserved.  
  
  
\--–  
  
  
For a long time, Evelyn almost fools herself into thinking she might escape, that she can get away, thread unnoticed on paths where everyone watches intently, hoping to spot your every misstep. The fate of Captain Thomas Rainier becomes public knowledge and the voices rise up, up above the roofs and away, carrying the gossip and speculation across the Marches but she hears nothing from her family.  
  
_Nothing_ and it's hardly a novelty in her family to be ignored but she's always considered it a mercy all the same. Out of sight, out of mind even if a Trevelyan rarely forgets and the lords and ladies of Ostwick have keen eyes, well-trained in the art of acknowledging the smallest deficiency among their friends and foes.  
  
Now Thom is hers and it's a quiet sin, a wordless uproar playing out in the outskirts of the breaches in the sky and the massive machinations that follow.  
  
The letter arrives as they prepare to leave for the Hissing Wastes.  
  
At first it nearly gets torn up by blades and arrows, carelessly tossed around in her bedchamber where she keeps no order and forbids the servants to enter.  
  
She finds it again the night before departure and tucks it into her pack as an afterthought, a quick motion of partial defeat.  
  
It's her mother's hand-writing – soft and even, each letter perfectly rounded and measured against the other, forming chains of words that look like art. Anne has the same talent for it, her hands have always held the power of ink and colours, of shape and purpose and it's ironic, people say, that she eventually found find magic in them. Their brother Maxwell writes like Evelyn, slow and uneasy, but he's a man and an _heir_ and held up against different scales, a whole different world at his feet.  
  
_Surely you understand that should you decide to continue this ill-advised entanglement with a known criminal – a murderer, Evelyn – we are forced to act. While you seem to ignore how this matter will affect the reputation of your so-called Inquisition, you will not ignore the consequences it will have for your family. Your father is not going to welcome Captain Rainier in his family. Your grandfather would be disappointed-_  
  
Her grandfather who had never allowed anybody's slander to touch him, who walked unafraid and unbowed and dismissed every quarrel of the family with a wave of his hand. _I have no time for absurdities, leave me be._ Her grandfather – warm voice and strong hands and love, _endless_ love – who is the only reason she wants to be a Trevelyan, wants to belong to the sprawling, half-broken family line although it seems intent on trying to cut her off.  
  
With a grimace Evelyn squares her shoulders and watches the road ahead of them, watches the fire that lights up their camp. The letter crumbles in her hand, becomes _nothing_ as she smashes it into a hard ball and throws it at the flames.  
  
It's gone, she thinks. All of it. _Gone_.  
  
Only her grandfather's ghost remains.  
  


 


	30. Chapter 30

 

**oath**  
( _noun_ )  
  
  
  
They're children, mere girls, and Anne shows her magic at the end of the long road that's leading up to their keep in Ostwick. Her thin, wiry hands carrying all that forbidden power and Evelyn draws a sharp breath, holding it inside her for a moment, not trusting it enough to let it out.   
  
“Oh, Anne,” she says when she dares to speak again. The flame that had flickered and flown right out of Anne's skin has gone out, gone back into hiding. Evelyn wishes she had never seen it.   
  
Her sister is quiet. A little older, much more well-behaved but she lies about this and Evelyn wants her to keep lying, to keep hiding because there is no mercy in the Circle, no mercy in the way Templars wrap their shields and tricks around you when they drag you away and-   
  
Oh, _Anne_.   
  
“I can fight them,” she says, tilting her head back and squaring her shoulders as though she's already falling into her fighting stance. “I'll _fight_ them. I won't let them take you away to the Circle.”  
  
And her sister is older, should be the one with the oaths and the swearing but now she grabs Evelyns' hands and holds them, presses them inside her own. “Swear it, sister.”  
  
“I swear.”  
  
Evelyn makes no more promises for as long as she can remember; that part of her – the wild, warm gestures, the reassuring faith - goes with Anne, lingers in a narrow tower where they teach you to be afraid.   
  
  
\--–  
  
  
It rains the day he promises – _pledges_ himself – to lead a life of military service in the Orlesian army, to act in a way that benefits the Orlesian Empire. Thomas Rainier but he calls himself _Thom_ , refuses to bring the memory of his father with him now that he's finally escaped.   
  
He's still a young man and his voice is certain, his back is straight; he speaks with the triumph of someone who has not yet broken a promise because nobody knows him here, nobody knows the truth.   
  
  
–--  
  
  
Promises fall out of him like breaths for years after that day, hollow and half-hearted. For someone who has always been a disappointment it's a peculiar relief to be able to say _yes, I will_ and _I promise_. There's no one close enough to notice if he fails, notice that he's still a fucking coward; he keeps his distance, his heart closed.   
  
He promises everyone everything. His officers and later his men, his mother in the scant letters he still writes home during those first years in Orlais, the tavern girls he wraps his arms around in stolen moments in between duties.   
  
“I'll never forget you,” he tells one of them – she's young but precocious, she's red hair all over the bed and large, soft tits in his palms.   
  
The girl chuckles. “You haven't even learned my name, silly man.”  
  
“Didn't say it was your _name_ I wouldn't forget, now did I?”   
  
She hits him playfully over the head, he wrestles her gently until he's right above her and a couple of hours later they have already forgotten each other and any promise spoken between them.   
  
  
–--  
  
  
On that flight of stairs outside Skyhold's main entrance, elevated above the rest of them, Evelyn promises to save them all. For one moment she lets the chains that connect her with her own history – with Anne, with Brienna, with the whole bloody Conclave – disappear and she accepts a duty that is more immense than she can wrap her mind around.   
  
She has never felt more alone in her life.   
  
  
\--–  
  
  
  
“I won't let anything happen to you,” he mutters to the warm skin on Evelyn's back, the curve between her shoulder blades, the impossibly enthralling sides of her breasts. She makes a content sound when his lips brush over the sensitive skin and it clouds his mind as much as it always does; he could spend the rest of his life in her presence and never take it for granted, never grow accustomed to it. It still feels fresh, _raw_ in his body. An open wound. “I _swear_ it.”  
  
“Big words,” she retorts. She's lying on her stomach in bed, claiming she's studying some maps for the Hissing Wastes but he's fairly certain it's all a disguise to get some rest. For all her fairness when it comes to her troops and servants – _do go out in the sun for at least half a day, don't return to duty until you feel better, I have no use for dead soldiers_ – Evelyn is a woman who seldom just sits down and relaxes and Thom of all people knows it's much easier to be fair and generous towards others.   
  
He sits up, lets one hand brush over her right shoulder, the tense muscles in her neck. “I mean them.”  
  
There's a brief tug around the corners of her mouth, a smile as quick as a blink or a breath. He wants little more from life than to kiss her now, pull her closer and drag her down over him like warm, willing comfort. Maker knows he's been chasing that kind of comfort since he became a man grown – _everyone knows you're insatiable, Rainier_ – but this time it's something else entirely, something both humbling and frightening.   
  
Instead of dwelling too much on the whys and hows of his emotions, he cups her chin with his palm and leans closer. Her eyes are fixed on him, dark and awake; her arms strong around him when she inches closer. There are tiny freckles across the bridge of her nose, scattered over the broken and badly mended bone and further down her cheeks. She still hasn't told him how her nose got broken; he cannot remember if he's asked or if it's still another thing on his long list of things he's yet to learn about her.   
  
“I have a whole Inquisition standing between Corypheus and myself,” she says then, apparently not going to let the matter slide in favour of more prosaic pleasure. At least not yet. “What about you?”  
  
“What about me, my lady?”  
  
Evelyn sits up, too, leaning back against the headboard as she puts the maps on the bedside table.   
  
_You're careless with yourself,_ she says in his memory, hands untangling knots in his hair, the rough pad of her thumb caressing old untreated injuries along his arms and back, fingers digging into the bad shoulder he tries to ignore most of the time but occasionally has to give in to, wincing as he puts on his armour or lifts a heavy load.   
  
The same could be said of her; he had told her as much and watched the shadows - annoyed, slightly _hurt_ \- cross her features. But the same _could_ be said of her and he wishes she saw herself the way he sees her, the way the Inquisition sees her, even the way their enemy sees her because in the furious war he wages there is admiration, Thom knows. Admiration based on genuine, all-consuming fear and that is no small feat.   
  
“You're careless with yourself,” she tells him again now, in her bedchamber. He raises an eyebrow at the remark though there is no denying the truth in it; she places both of her hands on his bare chest and he immediately feels a few fingers circling around his most recent injury – a large bruise placed somewhere between his ribs and belly. It still aches when she touches it.   
  
“Sera would have got herself killed-”  
  
Evelyn cuts him off with a kiss, followed by another one. Thom holds on to her waist, her hips, pulling her closer. Forehead against forehead for a long while, her skin like burnt silk under his hands and her scent, her taste at the back of his tongue. He's taken aback with how _desperately_ he loves her in moments like this, how deep the longing for her goes; he's speechless with the way she cares about him, wants him, worries about him.   
  
“I want you to promise me that you won't let anything happen to _you_.” Her voice is still, serious. It's as much an order as anything spoken on the battlefield.   
  
Thom nods, clears his throat.   
  
“Then I promise you that,” he says and somehow it feels like the heaviest promise he's ever made but the words spill out of him, light as air.   
  



	31. Chapter 31

 

**paint  
** _(verb)_

 

Her hands fly across the paper, charcoal-stained and soft from rubbing against the surface; she rests for a minute, blinks. Almost done. Another shadow, a too-sharp edge around his nose that needs to be smoothed out.  
  
Her hands fly across the paper, her mind muddled with worry and preparations and those nightmares that have begun to appear vision-like as she wakes up, her entire body hard and sweating, heart pounding.   
  
This has always been an escape. _Paint the world until it becomes clear to you_ , her grandfather would say as Evelyn sat slumped in his library, glaring at the vast oceans of books she would never have time to read. _Paint the world as you see it._ Her thumb rubs over the outline of his jaw, down the broad neck where no drawing in Thedas could do justice to the scent of him, the strange mixture of heat, sweat and leather. She can almost feel it in her mouth, tickling the back of her tongue like a solid bite of sheer _want_ .   
  
“That’s me?” Thom’s voice is low behind her and there’s a shiver as his breath closes in on the bare skin on her neck.”Maker’s _balls_ .”   
  
Evelyn bites down on her lip to keep from grinning. “Eloquent as ever.”   
  
When she turns around she notices he doesn’t take his eyes off the portrait, his gaze is wide-open and naked. There’s a hunger there that feels like a hole in the sky, pulling her in. Some days she wonders if he wants _her_ or merely something to forget himself; other days she wonders if the same could be said for her, as well. A part of her has been lost along the way, others shed out of necessity or choice as the Inquisition marches on through the land and perhaps this love, this _force_ , is a way to feel whole again.

  
Perhaps she’s just trying not to think.   
  
“Thom?”   
  
He averts his gaze from the charcoal-version of himself, finally. His mouth opens as though he is about to speak, but there are no words. Instead he kisses her, fast and hard; Evelyn takes a step back to regain her balance and moans into his mouth as they stumble backwards into an armour stand. Her fingers leave grey-black stains all over his cheeks and she tries to kiss them off but fails, spitting charcoal on the floor instead and causing Thom to chuckle.   
  
“Eloquent as ever, my lady.” His hands cradle her hips, it never fails to make her knees feel weak.   
  
She wraps her arms around his neck, hands digging into his thick hair. “Do shut up.”   
  
Later they’re both a mess and Evelyn’s glad she’s chosen one of Skyhold’s least used spare room for her little escape today. Old frames, broken paintings and a few sacks of questionable content surround them which is perfect for a hideout. No treasures in sight.   
  
Thom places his chin on her shoulders, pulling her tighter; she folds her hands over his wrists, pressing her back into his stomach. That is how they sleep lately, shutting out all the spaces in between, every possible _escape_ ; they are too warm-blooded and bulky to catch any sleep that way but stubbornly ignoring such facts.   
  
His chest serving as her pillow, her thighs trapping one of his knees; he sleeps with one hand curved around her breast and she shakes her head at it, calling him hopeless but she doesn’t mind.   
  
His snoring and hers, her half-muttered monologues in her sleep and wild kicking as soon as he wraps the blankets around them. Their rhythm, broken as it is.  

And her stained fingertips leaving markings on his skin.

Paint the world until it becomes clear to you.  
  
He is.

  
  
  
  
  



	32. Chapter 32

**quirk  
** _(noun)_

 

His fear of idleness, the restlessness that seems so misplaced in his broad, heavy body. Hands always moving in camp, cleaning blades and knives, oiling leather, clearing plates; from the very beginning he strikes her as someone who longs for laziness but denies himself that vice. Even afterwards, when everybody knows, the _frantic_ patterns of work that don’t seem to fit the man he is or the idea she has of him.    
  
\--

A little shuffling motion in his voice back when he’s still Blackwall - _Gordon_ Blackwall though she can’t remember him ever using that first name, can’t remember if she had asked - and they’ve spoken for longer than a few moments. A shuffling motion, slivers of the whole being arranged and rearranged. And then that first morning together, the first proper dawn they see after she’s judged him at Skyhold and she thinks he sounds like someone else entirely and it startles her how _terrified_ she is, only briefly, but fear settles deep in her gut all the same.

\--  
  
His strangely vast knowledge of local legends and tall tales for seemingly every place they ever visit. They enter a tavern and he remembers someone telling him a knight once hung himself from the ceiling there; they make camp in a forest where he knows the stories told about the wildlife there and how it is said to be  interwoven with a cult devoted to Andraste; Cassandra or Vivienne mentions a noble and he mutters under his breath how said noble has five bastards with a serving wench or made his wife summon a demon just to get rid of him. _People yammering all day long_ , Sera explains to her once, on a roof with two bottles of whiskey between them. _Blah blah blah, rich tits don’t even care if we hear. Thinking we can’t do anything to hurt them. Ha! Pissbags can suit themselves. Not you, Herald. Mostly._  
  
\--  
  
How sleep is a gradual shift for him when it’s a quick matter to her. She goes to bed, falls asleep, wakes up and is dressed within moments. Thom sort of _drags_ himself to bed in the first place, slowly and reluctantly as though he’s always expecting nightmares or fears not waking up again, wanting to finish everything in this life before he closes his eyes. Slow to wake, too, which is odd for a soldier but delightful for a lover; she sneaks arms around his chest in bed, wraps legs over his hips and presses morning-dry lips to his shoulder and he groans in response, deep in his throat. If she could, she would keep them this way forever, right on the precipice of pleasure.  
  
  


* * *

 

 **quell  
** ( _verb_ )

 

Worst part about the desert is the night.

The Hissing Wastes are endless, horrendous fields of dust and bone as it is, sand slipping in under his clothes, inside his shoes, piling up in his mouth if he looks the wrong way and then night comes and renders him bloody blind, too. There are wyverns hidden everywhere and everything about him smells of blood and fire after a couple of days on this mission. And sand, a hundred flavours of it. Wet sand, dry sand, hardened sand, slippery sand, ancient fucking _sand_.

They’re camped on top of a canyon overlooking a whole world of rocks and desert trees, slopes and dunes. Once they’ve rested for a night or two, the Inquisitor intends for them to go tomb-crawling in search of more answers Thom isn’t certain he even _wants_.

“Tell me about the ghasts again, eh?” Sera wraps her blanket tighter around her small frame and looks at him from the other side of the campfire. The injury on the right side of her face seems better already but it’s still angry-red. Nasty sort.

“Oh please do not even _think_ of starting that tedious tale,” Dorian groans exasperatedly into his goblet of what Thom assumes is warm wine with healing herbs. He’s been quiet since they made camp, a little more guarded and less arrogant since they’ve sliced their way through hordes of Venatori madmen. “I can’t handle any more mental images of you without your clothes.”

“Just Wilfred then.” Sera chuckles. “Proper stupid, that one.”

Evelyn glances sideways at him and Thom regrets - with a hot flush of shame - that he had wrapped up his story by confessing he spent a week with a prostitute to feel better. Different life back then, but it seems like such terrible business involving your lady in those kinds of memories. Especially _her_ , especially Evelyn because there’s a streak of sadness in her, something _unhealed_ that he can’t quite grasp well enough to make better. _I’m not broken_ , she snaps in his head. _We are what we are, it’s hardly more than that_ but Thom circles around the matter like a vulture, unable to let go. She had mended him, still _is_. Hopeless sodding bastard that he is he’s always honoured the idea of favour for a favour and he _craves_ the opportunity with her, hungers for it like it’s proper food after a fortnight with nothing but watery soup out in the fields.

“Nah,” he says, reaching for his water flask and trying not to wince. The last wyvern they fought today seems to have cracked one of his ribs – half his body is likely a big bruise but he's too tired to check. “No more stories tonight.”

Later, surrounded by stars and Sera's snoring from the nearby tent, Thom and Evelyn share the first shift by the fire. She's spread out a large pile of books and letters they've came across so far, created a pattern in the sand; her shoulders look tense, her back oddly shaped as though she's trying to wrap herself around their findings. Dorian has been out here with her for an eternity, too, side by side beneath the night sky and Thom recalls how he used to squirm whenever he watched the two of them before, back when he had a whole life to hide and the mage had a way of _looking_ at him as if he knew. He’d loathed the man, couldn’t find a single reason for the Inquisitor to be so fond of him and even less reasons for a Tevinter mage to befriend a noblewoman from the Marches. _Perhaps he appreciates my qualities_ , she had commented then, icily.

Here in the desert he brushes the back of his hand over the nape of her neck. It’s met with a content little noise but she doesn’t break herself out of the immersion in what she’s doing.

“Sorry,” he mutters. He usually is, for one thing or another but tonight it's a lingering sort of sorry, a bitter taste at the back of his tongue. A more permanent sorry, perhaps, written all over him. _I don’t deserve you, never will._

Evelyn doesn’t look up, though he can see that she’s frowning. “What for?”  
  
“I don't know...” he shakes his head. “Plenty of things.”  
  
In the distance, far behind the dunes on the horizon, there’s a rustle in the air followed by the howls of dragons. Right beside him, Evelyn sighs.  
  
“Read this to me?” She nods towards a large scroll in front of her, tiny scribbled letters written in several different directions on the paper and he can see why it would make her head throb worse than usual. While they had both pretended in the beginning - she’d claim she loved hearing his voice and his vanity had let him believe that much longer than it should have - it’s now merely a mutual understanding between them, a quiet notion in the fabric of daily duties.  
  
Thom merely nods, sitting down and shifting closer to her. Evelyn’s shoulder is pressed into his arm, her warm, solid shape a reminder of life here among the stale ruins that magic seems to have corrupted even further.  
  
When he tilts his head just slightly to breathe her in, he can see a smile play on her lips.


	33. Chapter 33

**ramify**  
( _verb_ )  
  
  
  
Evelyn is quiet for long stretches of time as their journey to the Arbor Wilds begin. _Too_ quiet, Thom thinks, not certain what he can do to ease the discomfort or help shoulder the burdens. Most likely nothing, which in turn renders him sleepless.   
  
They pass a lot of war-torn areas, make camp in lands where the blood on the ground has barely dried and when they take turns by the fire, the usual atmosphere of banter and other survival mechanisms has been morphed into a much sterner version. _Focused fear of dying_ , Dorian calls it as they share the last meal for the day - fish and bread with onion soup - while watching the wildlife wake up and go to sleep in their own cycles of life around them. Oblivious nature only here, in the forests near their next battleground, it doesn’t seem all that oblivious to him. It breathes. Thom walks around among trees and birds and grass and feels at times like he’s being bloody _watched_ by the very earth, or judged by some ancient being in the warm and humid air.   
  
When he enters the tent he shares with Evelyn he finds her sitting cross-legged on her bedroll, holding her hand while the mark on it glows. She doesn’t look up, there’s a pained expression on her face and a twist of icy terror in Thom’s chest.   
  
“Evelyn.” He hears his own voice, already full of grief.   
  
She shakes her head. “It’s nothing. Truly.”   
  
Now she looks up, pushing away the trace of suffering as their eyes meet. His mother used to do that, he suddenly remember with a sting. Head bowed, hands aching from hard work, shoulders slumped and whenever Liddy called or Thom barged into the house she’d inhale sharply then turn around, smiling. Back then it had irritated him. Seeing it in someone else’s movements now makes him realise how desperately brave an act is was, how desolate it had made her.   
  
“Maker’s balls,” he says, quietly. “I want to _help_ you.”   
  
Evelyn’s neck is red from having travelled through the recent heat and her face is sun-marked, too, he notices when she looks up at him, jaw set and gaze firm. She’s so damn _proud_. Proud and stubborn and composed in the middle of all this chaos and he isn’t certain whether he loves her for it or if it drives him mad with frustration.   
  
Placing her palms against her knees, she rises to her feet and walks up to him, slowly. Thom still can’t help but looking at her, concern like a lump in his throat. They have faced perils and almost-certain death before - Maker knows their entire lives _consist_ of just that - but this time he fears it in an overwhelming fashion. There’s a nagging suspicion in his bones, an unspecified sort of terror that he cannot quell because he does not know its origin. Whenever he tries to reach for it he’s met with a flurry of images: the Breach, the battle of Haven, Evelyn’s marked hand, darkspawn, darkness, death.   
  
So many years of fighting and he’s never been this afraid on the verge of battle.   
  
So many years of fighting and he’s never had something to _lose_.  
  
Evelyn stands so close now, her face turned slightly upwards, the worry-lines on her forehead smoothed out again; her burning hand on his arm, the other one suddenly around the back of his head, pulling him down for a kiss. He kisses her back after a beat’s hesitation, a very brief doubt about the time and place.   
  
Her kiss deepens quickly, then her mouth is greedily moving over his jaw, his neck and Thom knows where she’s headed; he regrets having his full armour on, regrets being on first watch this evening. He has some time but not a lot, not enough.   
  
Instead he gently grabs her wrists and continues to kiss her while motioning them towards the table at the far end of the Inquisitor’s rather generous tent. Evelyn moans softly in his embrace. She’s dressed for bed, wearing a tunic and thin breeches - clothes that that easily allows his hand to slip inside, caressing her unbound breasts, his thumb covering her nipples before making its way over the curves and slopes down along her chest and belly. Hard ribs, supple muscle and soft, endlessly warm flesh, a whole body that opens itself for him, _to_ him, as Evelyn leans against the table and closes her eyes.   
  
There is still full activity outside the tent, a whole camp of scouts and soldiers giving and receiving orders as the colourful day moves towards a grayer night. Though the Inquisitor is rarely disturbed during her rest unless there is good reason, Thom is certain that this time and place is more than likely to present good reasons by the dozen. _They are already appalled we’re shagging_ , Evelyn had grinned once, when he had expressed some - admittedly faint and utterly fleeting - concerns about her timing. Hearing us do it won’t change much.   
  
Even so, he has his limits. _Do you now, Rainier? That is new._   
  
When they are safely returned to Skyhold, he promises himself, tells it inwardly like a chant to sustain him through these dark days. When they are safe and alive back in Skyhold he will enjoy a long uninterrupted evening - or morning or bloody afternoon, it will hardly matter -  together with this woman and there will be no spot of her body left untouched.   
  
When he tells her, mouth against her ear, she gasps a little and he slides one finger inside her, slow and steady. Maker, she’s incredibly wet and he’s in his damn _armour_.   
  
“Tell me more,” Evelyn mumbles; her breath lands on his cheek, dampens his beard.   
  
He does. If there is one thing he actually knows, apart from how to swing a blade, it’s how to fuck. He doesn’t mean it in a vain fashion - at least not often and definitely not since he grew old and ugly - but in an almost intellectual sense of the word. That’s what he’s been doing for an almost unthinkable amount of years, after all. Bedding women in more or less awkward places and positions, using a plethora of tricks and treats. That is the one thing from his previous life that he feels has any sort of use in his relationship with Evelyn, the one thing he can apply to _them_. Considering what else he brings with him, he thanks the Maker for at least one blessing.   
  
Thom holds back a groan when she starts rocking against his hand, as his thumb circles around her most sensitive spot, holds back a groan when he thinks about how she tastes, that deep, earthy scent that lingers at the back of his tongue for hours, a thrilling reminder of what they’ve done. Holds back a groan as  he increases his stroking, matching his rhythm against hers, and she shudders into their kiss and clenches around him. For a blissful second nothing feels more complex than this, right here. Bodies easing up, needs being met. There had been a tense urgency in her expression before but it has faded now, he can see when she pulls back just a little, allowing him a better look at her.   
  
She smiles. Not a forced smile this time, but one from the pit of her stomach. Something turns in his chest, hot and heavy.   
  
“Now that was actually helpful,” she says, adjusting her tunic again.   
  
He offers a grin in return. “I’m glad.”  
  
Footsteps approach outside and judging by the light that falls into the opening of the tent, it has got to be time for his shift soon. He wipes his hands on her breeches with an even wider grin - she loves it when he’s crude, she’s told him more than once - and presses a kiss to her forehead. The contrasts makes her chuckle.   
  
“What about you?”   
  
Thom shrugs. “I’ll walk it off.”  
  
When he’s about to leave, she catches up, placing one last kiss on his cheek.   
  
“Wake me up when you are done and we shall see what I can do for you.”

He returns to Arbor Wild’s sunset with a smirk on his face.   
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
She’s had more than her share of exploring ancient ruins and temples now, Evelyn thinks as they climb inside yet another one. And not just any ancient temple but the Temple of Mythal, apparently.   
  
There’s an overwhelming sense of being in the wrong place that suffocates her, nearly strong enough to physically hold her off as their little group struggle forward. She’s out of her depth here. They all are, she realises, even their self-proclaimed expert Morrigan struggles to hide her lack of knowledge and Evelyn regrets not being on better terms with Solas because she has so many questions she would like him to answer for her. One reason she steers away from him here in the Arbour Wilds is that she feels he might be too biased about their whereabouts, that this will be too close to him, too important.   
  
All _she_ can bring herself to care about is to destroy Corypheus. Even if she knows, deep in her soul that nothing is ever that pure, that no subject ever has so few layers, that is what she must tell herself at present: we are here to defeat an evil that must be vanquished.   
  
That there are no nuances, no concerns.   
  
“Mankind blunders through the world, crushing what it cannot understand,” Morrigan says, her voice laced with a sentimentality Evelyn had never known she possesses. It surprises her enough to render her speechless for a while.   
  
“That is hardly why we’re here,” she says, tamely.   
  
“Is it not?” The witch gives her a long glance.   
  
Evelyn steps over a square of broken tiles where a small patch of the forest has seeped in, as though it’s tried to take over but failed or just begun its struggle.   
  
“Let’s keep walking.”   
  
“This place,” Dorian mutters by her side. “I don’t properly _understand_ it.”   
  
“That’s not reassuring,” Evelyn mutters back; her shoulders ache, her throat is dry and there is magic as old as time all around them, prickling at their skin.   
  
“I know.”   
  
Confusion _is_ what the temple breathes, she decides as they stop for a moment before a large wolf statue that causes Morrigan to bicker with Solas about the various legends of Mythal. Evelyn thinks of her grandfather as she listens, thinks of long afternoons in the library and his voice, rumbling through the stones as she put her ear to the floor and listened to his tales about myths and their supposed origin. _Everything originates somewhere_ , he would say. _Whether it’s in history or superstition. And everything has a meaning._   
  
“We can send for historians once peace is brought to this forest,” Evelyn hears herself snap, already walking away from the staring wolf. The Dread Wolf, even. “Corypheus is my concern.”   
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
That bloody well is nothing but an eerie puddle of trouble, as far as Thom is concerned.   
  
The kind of wisdom that can scour a world, the Red Templar general had called it and Thom may not be a scholar but he is still beyond certain that that’s not the kind of wisdom anyone needs to have in their heads.   
  
It’s depressing enough to witness what this chase for immortal beings and their empty promises has done to the templars that the Inquisition now have left for dead, corpses scattered across the forest. Soldiers made to be living fortresses, trapped and bound to red lyrium and their masters. _This is the strength the chantry tried to bind_ and Thom gets it, Maker help him he understands this more than he understands a lot of things on their journeys. The desire to matter, the petty cravings of men left in the shadows. If you find a way to use such base emotions you can rule over vast armies, he’ll give it to their enemies - at least they realise this.   
  
Templars and Grey Wardens, used as puppets.   
  
Thom shakes his head, trying to shake off the discomfort.   
  
“I _won’t_ lose you,” he tells Evelyn as they stand in front of the wretched well. “Let the witch use it.”  
  
She still stares at the water with a serious expression, as though hoping to determine its nature and the price demanded of her through a long study of it. Thom, in turn, stares at her. He knows he can lose her to battlefields - the thought cuts him up inside but he knows -  and there’s a heartbroken acceptance beginning to form around that insight. Battle is what they do, after all. But losing her over matters like this one, that he cannot endure.   
  
_You wouldn’t understand_ , Evelyn says in his head. And he wouldn’t. He can safely say that there is no thread of insight in him helping him understand the allure in powers such as the ones in the Well of Sorrows. It appears to him as there are more disadvantages to such a thing than there can ever be benefits. _Forever bound to the will of Mythal_ has an ominous sound no matter how much he ties to reason with himself and no matter how little superstition he has in his body.   
  
In the end she lets the witch of the wilds have her well and Thom thanks the Maker, quietly to himself.   
  
In the end, they manage to wreck the mirror after they have escaped to it and when they stumble out, hands and knees on one of the floors in Skyhold, he finally exhales.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
**respite**  
( _noun_ )  
  
  
Her grandfather’s study where the walls were cool against the summer heat and the air smelled of roses from the garden just outside. One window always ajar - _your grandmother arranged this garden once, she’s still out there_ \- and his private sphere never entirely closed, not for her. _One seldom knows when one might need a moment’s rest from all the rest_ he says sometimes and gives her a knowing smile.   
  
In his study - this magical, wondrous room - Evelyn is sprawled on the floor, bruised knees against the stone tiles and her hands working away at a drawing or painstakingly trying to learn to form letters. It’s offensive to her how she can paint the rose bushes and the lakes but not write the simplest tale without requiring assistance.    
  
Offensive but grandfather has dry, soft hands in her hair and reads aloud from her favourite books of legends.   
  
  
\--  
  
  
  
Markham’s marketplace whenever the visitors arrive in summertime. Visitors from Orlais - proud Chevaliers, masked ladies and snotty little brats; visitors from Nevarra, from Antiva and the rest of the city states in the Marches. Markham’s summer bazar, full of sights and sounds that sustain most of them for the rest of the dull year.   
  
Thom sneaks away from his duties, stands wide-eyed and wordless and watches as dwarven daggers and Antivan silk change owners, as horses and knights make their way through the heart of the city and children plead with their mothers to have roasted almonds and sugary treats from the merchants by the chantry.   
  
He returns home later than he should but doesn’t even hear his mother’s irritation, doesn’t let it in; he climbs into bed and falls asleep dreaming of horses and swords.   
  
  
\--  
  
  
  
The great hall is full of dancing and Evelyn is full of quiet rebellion, nothing new under the sun. She’s escaped the commotion and sits on the stairs leading to the second floor, sits there with a plate of grapes and goat cheese and watches the guests.   
  
“Ser Joar is definitely not striking.” Her brother sits down beside her, one step higher as though he’s marking his age. “And he keeps talking about boars. Did you know how _boring_ it is to hunt boars?”  
  
Evelyn grins, chewing a large grape. “I can imagine.”  
  
“Oh, but _can_ you? Can you truly picture every - single - detail.” He rolls his eyes and shoves a small cheese wheel into his mouth. “Maker’s breath, I can’t believe mother wanted Anne to marry that man once upon a time.”  
  
“I think Anne is better of in the Circle.” Evelyn almost believes it now, almost a little more for each passing day.   
  
Her brother nods; they remain at the stairs for as long as there is cheese and fruit left on the plate and gossip downstairs to be overheard. And in bits and pieces, at least, the feast is a roaring success.   
  
  
  
\--  
  
  
That peaceful moment in someone’s arms, his head resting against the crook of a neck or a pair of tits, his body still recovering; those seconds when he forgets himself. He could spend the rest of his bloody wretched life chasing that, in the vain hope that it will one day add up and become enough to truly fulfill him. That it will be enough.  
  
Thom wakes up, mouth dry from drinking the night before, head heavy and aching and his belly empty but he feels _alive_.  
  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Thom’s large hands splayed across her back, palms pressing down over her shoulder blades and along her spine as they’re studying books and maps and reports through the evenings and nights. She wants to read up on everything remotely associated with Corypheus, wants to feel prepared no matter how much of an illusion it is and Thom wants to help her with whatever she needs help with. Her gaze then, when she turns her head to look at him: hazy and focused all at once and Thom kisses her mouth, _helplessly_.   
  
  
The Skyhold garden while the bulk of their soldiers are still on their way back from the Arbor Wilds; the peace that somehow falls in it like a spell, an enchantment. In the setting sun or the afternoon light, walking slowly among the medical herbs, neatly planted  in the shadier spots, and the decorative ones boldly reaching for the sun.   
  
  
The restful spaces in the old fortress, visible again with the recent lack of inhabitants; the restful spaces, like slices of another reality altogether, one where they are not incessantly battling creatures they barely understand, one where Evelyn is just an ordinary woman, half-templar, half-noble and Thom is no one, a simple mercenary, a vagabond from the woods. Perhaps they would have met randomly, perhaps she would have hired him for a task.   
  
Perhaps they would have loved each other anyway.   
  
Days like these when they’re having supper with Sera and Dorian and Varric in the tavern, swapping stories from their travels and downing ale, she can certainly believe it.   



	34. Chapter 34

  
  
**sacrifice**   
( _ verb; noun _ )   
  
  
  
  
  
Once, a very long time ago, there’s a woman crying in the mud (or so one version of the legend claims). She has blood on her hands, fire in her throat where she kneels by her lover’s side and he’s dead, forever lost because of her husband’s jealous rage. Lives wrecked to pieces, lives lost and the woman rises from it, rises tall and proud and ferocious with another woman’s voice joining hers. A choir of revenge.     
  
There will be cost. Unimaginable costs. There always are.    
  
  
\---   
  
  
Once, some thirty years ago now, there’s a woman crying in a bedchamber in Ostwick (of all places). She sits on a large bed, hands curled into fists in her lap; her nails are digging into her palms in a slow, reassuring rhythm. Her husband and the serving girl - the dark-haired elf who always sniffle when spoken to. Now it’s suddenly all too clear why.     
  
It’s no matter, she tells herself. No matter at all. They’ll get rid of the girl and never mention it again and these things happen all the time except they have never before happened to Lady Trevelyan.    
  
Her lips feel dry and chapped, her face cracking. In all the years of their marriage her husband has not strayed, not embarrassed her or himself with sordid  _ dalliances _ . It’s the pregnancy, she knows. It’s all because of this last, uncomfortable, unwanted transformation of her body, this war that has been raging inside her for nearly nine months. She has not asked for it; she has merely been subjected to it as the potions did not have the intended effect those months ago and then it quickly became too late for them altogether.    
  
It’s no matter, she tells the unborn baby.    
  
And it isn’t,as these things rarely are.    
  
But she will never love the child, not the way a child ought to be loved.    
  
  
  
\---   
  
  
  
There’s a bewildered sort of grief at the bottom of Morrigan’s gaze when Evelyn follows her - stumbling gracelessly through the eluvian once more, wishing it reduced to shattered glass.    
  
Confusion, mingled with something harder, something that tells Evelyn that the witch has always known this would happen. Known but willed herself not to.    
  
It’s as familiar to her as breathing.    
  
  
  
\---   
  
  
  
There’s a fire in the Inquisitor’s room that night.    


A crackling, unusually wild sort of fire - she’s made it herself, too impatient to wait for the servants or for Thom - and she sits a little too close to if for comfort. Her legs are bare after a long bath, the hardened skin on her knees stinging from the heat and he’s right behind her, his broad hands on her shoulders, working their way over every muscle.   
  
Evelyn sighs, closes her eyes and dips her head backwards until it rests against his belly. Neither of them speak much tonight, as though the words are as exhausted as the bearers, the people carrying them in their bodies.   
  
“Perhaps it’s a good thing I’m not a real Warden, eh,” Thom ventures eventually, his thumb running along the line of her jaw. Recent days have been full of terror and fear and the thought of losing him to noble sacrifice and archaic oats twists uncomfortable inside her despite knowing better.   
  
A low grunt escapes her, a noise that feels almost _feral_. “It’s a blessing.”   
  
_You are a blessing_ she thinks but the weight of those words is too much for an evening like this, an exhausted respite on the verge of battle. Instead she glances at him over her shoulder, briefly, and offers a small smile.   
  
“Warden or not I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of your blade.”  
  
Thom returns the smile; the corners of it are dark and thorny but everything around them is. “Says the woman with the Fade at her command.”  
  
There’s a fire in the Inquisitor’s room that night, all through the night, and they sleep right next to it, oblivious to the heat or craving it. 


	35. Chapter 35

  
**tacit**   
_ adj _ .    
  
  
There’s an air of absolute stillness at Skyhold those first nights after they stumble back from the Arbor Wilds. Stillness and peace as though such things can be created as compensation for what lies ahead; stillness and peace as a good omen for the battles yet to come. As though it may be constructed by the stones beneath or the warm, dry wood that surrounds them. In the unspoken gestures, the deep-set knowledge that has no words:   
  
Evelyn and Sera sit shoulder-to-shoulder at the far end of the room upstairs, backs against the wall and eyes firmly open as they drink - in spite of all that is sensible and advises by Skyhold’s advisors - until they dare to fall into uninterrupted sleep.    
  
Dorian who barely leaves the bookshelves until Varric coaxes him downstairs for a game of  _ Tevinter anything, your choice really, Scribbles.  _ Cassandra watching them from across the courtyard with an expression that Varric claims is disapproval though Evelyn would call it longing, possibly envy.   __   
  
The Chargers leading a small troop made up of Iron Bull, Cole, Blackwall and a few servants and gardeners. Destination unknown, but they return home with elfroot practically bursting out of their packs and pockets. The expression on Solas’ face as he watches the abundance.    
  
Vivienne and Josephine bent over maps, fingers resting across rivers and dungeons, palms covering heartlands and mountains.  __ No dear, mages aren’t capable of that.  Cullen beside them, arms idle and unoccupied as his mind races. Leliana as a shadow looming.    
  
Their bodies like patterns, sun-streaked and windproof patterns scattered across the world they are willing to die for.    
  
Their endless need for consolation here on the verge of destruction.    
  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
**  
****tail end** **  
** _noun_  
  
  
“Inquisitor, we have no forces to send with you - we must wait for them to return from the Arbor Wilds.”  
  
Cullen’s face is solemn, perfectly in tune with the tone of his voice, the gestures of his hands. The very air around them is quietly regretful today as they watch their familiar maps and speak of their familiar missions and reports.   
  
This they cannot plan. Or perhaps they have. Perhaps this is how it was always meant to happen.   
  
“I know.” Evelyn nods, shifting her weight. “Just as Corypheus expects, I suppose.”  
  
She’s not a martyr, not in the slightest, having been _dragged_ in this direction by fate and circumstances, yet she can’t treat this fight in any other way; the path ahead is carved in stone, her feet already threading it.   
  
As they walk out of the war room and into the yellow afternoon light that falls through the windows, Thom’s fingers brush across her wrist and she doesn’t have to look at him to know how his eyes are fixed on her, desperate and _dark_ like the abyss they’re headed towards.   
  
  
\--  
  
  
His eyes again, darker now and somehow _endless_ as he stoops over her where she’s sprawled on the ground, head pounding with pain and magic and power. There’s a wound on her cheek, a burn that still feels like it’s _boiling_ on the back of her left hand and an arrow nearly all the way through her calf.   
  
He doesn’t ask anything, doesn’t want to hear the answer.   
  
His hand around hers as he pulls her back on her feet.   
  
  
  
\--  
  
  
  


There are tears there, shimmering unspoken, though the notes of his voice are deep and dark.    
  
“And you live. I can breathe again.”   
  
Evelyn looks at him and smiles; for the first time in what feels like a whole life, she  _ smiles  _ with ease.    
  
  
\--   
  
  
  
  
It’s a tiresome journey back from the fight that she still can’t believe they just walked away from and Thom’s gaze never lets her escape, as though he’s guarding her against all possible evils in the forests and tired villages they pass on their way to Skyhold. As though the war-weary people cheering them on would suddenly turn on their Inquisitor and swallow her whole.     
  
They walk and Thom watches her, intently.    
  
“How’s your hand?”    
  
“I… don’t know yet.” She raises it slightly, observes the faint glow that has pulsated through her body for so long now it has rooted itself inside her.    
  
Neither of them mention what they both think: it still glows. The rift has closed and it still  _ glows _ . Uncertainty settles deep, low in her gut whenever she allows her mind to brush against that fact and instead she shrugs, eyes on the treetops and clouds ahead, the mornings that slowly awakes and the mornings yet to come.  
  
She watches the sky and refuses to believe it will crack open again.    
  



	36. Chapter 36

**Uneventful**   
_adj._   
  
  
  
  
“Do we ever have  _ uneventful  _ days?” he asks her rhetorically a long time ago, in passing, as they equip their shields and swords before battle.   
  
“Why? Do you want one?”    
  
He grunts as the heavy metal settles on his back with a thud. “More than anything, my lady.”   
  
“More than  _ anything _ ?” The teasing tone rolls off her tongue with little effort, originates from some secret well inside her that this bond between them has discovered, giving her an endless supply of suggestive retorts.    
  
A quick grin, that little spark in his eyes that seems strangely reserved for her. “Well, not quite.”   


  
  
\---   


  
  
“So now that you’ve saved the world what’s next? Hoping to put it all back together?”   
  
Of all the things Evelyn had imagined would take place once -  _ if  _ \- they diminished the threat from Corypheus, a formal celebration had not been one of them. Not even on the list, if she ever had one. Yet here she stands - in formal wear that smells of rich, heavy spices as though the servants have not had time to wash it properly and mask that fact with perfumes - conversing her companions and acquaintances with a goblet of wine in her hand.    
  
“Someone has to fix things,” she replies on cue. “Might as well be me.”   
  
As long as the Anchor still exists, she wagers without wanting to look at her own hand, she has very little choice in the matter.    
  
Now you are the power left standing, Leliana had said earlier and there is no softness in those words or their meaning, no  _ way  _ Evelyn can just allow them to slip into her mind without leaving traces.    
  
She walks through Skyhold tonight, utterly aware of each step and every motion. As though the fabric of this victory, this world they have won back, is a delicate spider’s web and she is its creator and destroyer all at once. That is bloody exhausting.    
  
Dorian toasts to her, promises to stay. Cullen will, too. She cannot even  _ imagine  _ Cullen walking away from Skyhold and his troops, wonders if he has forged his life’s purpose around the keep by now.    
  
Cassandra’s hand on her shoulder, a different kind of promise in her now, one of faith and order, of holding another world in her arms.  _ Stomach full of mantras _ , Cole whispers into her thoughts.  _ She burns like a beacon _ . She  _ does _ ; Evelyn holds on to her for dear life, can’t bear to be without that light.    
  
What the Bull plans and thinks only he knows but Evelyn laughs at his remarks about the nobility, about the war that they all pretend is over, about the  _ creature  _ they have pushed back.    
  
Vivienne, all smiles and grace and  _ we toast to your victory, my dear _ , will not stay. It had never been part of her plan and now she will find a bigger purpose to the magic in her blood, the power in her hands.    
  
Evelyn sits with Sera for a while, reaching for the light-hearted banter that has sustained her through so much already; she can’t find it but it doesn’t matter. Sera will stick around, for better and for worse.    
  
Thom sits with Cole but pushes to his feet when Evelyn approaches, as if he’s been waiting for nothing else the whole evening and it’s likely he hasn’t. It would go for the both of them, if that was the case.    
  
“Leaving your own party so soon, my lady?” he asks despite this, one eyebrow slightly arched.    
  
The formal wear suits him better than she recalls from last time he wore it though her memories aren’t exactly sharp and precise instruments these days, more of a chaotic blur and the wine’s nearly gone to her head at this point. But he looks good. Safe, sound,  _ sturdy _ .    
  
He looks like he’s hers.    
  
“You should join me,” she says. “But fetch a plate of those things first.”    
  
Thom follows her gaze towards a servant holding a silver tray filled with colourful bites of food.    
  
“Hungry?” He sounds amused, quietly  _ enthusiastic  _ in a way that lands in the pit of Evelyn’s stomach with a heavy beat.    
  
“Josephine sent all the way to the capital for the petit fours.” She opens the door leading to her private chambers, gesturing for him to follow suit. “Pity if they go to waste.”   
  


  
\--   


  
  
Later, Thom’s kisses taste of almond and her thumb is smeared in white chocolate as she runs her fingers through his hair, oddly eager to stain him everywhere, mark him as hers.     
  
“No matter what happens to me now, I can say I was  _ there _ . I helped you bring him down.” There’s urgency in his words - hunger, even greed - and in his hands when they travel to her waist, pulling her tight against his chest. There’s that glint in his eyes, the wide-open breach in it. Part of his feelings for her will always be about gratefulness, she’s got no illusions about that; she finds that she doesn’t mind it, figures everything’s twisted to a certain degree.  _ She  _ certainly is. “Thank you for that.”   
  
“You’ve pulled your own weight, Thom.”   
  
“Have I?”    
  
“You have kept me grounded.” Arching her head back slightly so he can kiss her collarbones, drag his mouth down towards her breasts. Her breath hitches, stutters out of her. “W-with a spot of the bloody Fade in my body, that’s no small feat.”    
  
  


\---

 

  
  
Dawn comes as a surprise, early and persistent through the uncovered windows and Evelyn wakes up first, draped under Thom’s arm and warm sheets; she inhales for a moment, looks at her hand. It has always tingled in the morning, always woken her up with its beat, the unfamiliar, unwanted presence deep down in her flesh and bones.    
  
It still does and that insight makes her close her eyes again, like a child hoping for a different outcome when her eyes open once more.    
  
Green tendrils between her fingers and she clenches her teeth, moves closer to Thom who’s sleeping like a bear, oblivious to everything around him. It’s not his usual habit, she knows. He’s as restless as she is -  _ worse _ , actually - and thunders through life like someone being on the run even after the gallows.  _ Especially  _ after the gallows, truth be told.    
  
Evelyn nudges him in his sleep, brushes her lips against his nose. He grunts softly but doesn’t move or look up. Eventually she gets dressed without him, goes down to have breakfast with Sera who nurses a hangover and a temper worthy of a high dragon; they take a walk through the grounds, Evelyn talks to the guards, the merchants, the remains of her grand force that shook the world. Change is coming for them, too, but not today.    
  
When she returns to her bedchamber Thom is finally awake, looking up from the bed as she arrives.    
  
“What time is it? Did I miss something?”   
  
“Only Sera puking into an old suit of armour.” Evelyn sits by the bedside; his hands reach for her wrists, she grins as he pulls her down over him.    
  
“Maker’s balls.”    
  
“Don’t think I’ve ever seen you sleep like that,” she says, two fingers absent-mindedly fondling his beard.    
  
He smiles, almost bashfully. “You should have woken me up, my lady. It must be afternoon now?”   
  
“Didn’t you wish for an uneventful day or two?”    
  
His body is warm and sweet against hers, the slight chill from outside melting into the heat of blankets and sheets and Thom’s hands under her tunic and she shifts her position so she’s straddling him in bed, drawing a low chuckle from his chest.    
  
“Not so uneventful any more, I take it?”   
  
Removing her tunic and leaning down to kiss him, Evelyn shakes her head. “Not so much, no.”


	37. Chapter 37

 

 **Vagabond**  
_noun_

 

  
  
The clattering, swooshing noises of soldiers training nearby serve as backdrop as she sinks down by a large tree, helmet off and hands finally liberated from the gloves she’s been wearing for so long now they’ve begun to stick to her skin. The pain soars through her the moment her Fade-hand is uncovered, but she bites it back behind her teeth, shoves it down her throat. _You have to get that looked at_ , Thom had said flatly before he left and Evelyn would take him up on his advice, _surely_ , if there was someone around to look at it and possess the knowledge to tell what in the Maker’s name to do about it. She has no use for worriers or chest-clutching gossips who will merely stare in disbelief and _gasp_ .  
  
They’re in northern Ferelden. Cullen and a considerable troop of Inquisition soldiers are escorting her to a formal meeting with the court and Evelyn wonders if it’s the fall of Corypheus that has shifted her thoughts and feelings about it all. Months ago she would not have felt trapped or guarded in this setting - it would have made sense, would have been fair, would have seemed _natural_ \-  and she would not have regarded her travelling companions as redundant and annoying.  
  
She does now.  
  
They’re in northern Ferelden and Evelyn closes her eyes and wishes herself away.  
  
Leaning her head back against the tree and picking up her water bottle from inside her backpack, she allows herself a moment of rest. Proper rest. The kind of rest that demands another read-through of Thom’s last letter and, unless Cullen manages to disturb her yet again today, she might even have enough undisturbed moments to finish her own.  
  
Not that she writes all that much. He doesn’t expect her to. They never speak of her limitations in that regard but if anyone is aware of them, it’s Thom. All those nights by the fire back when they barely knew each other and he still was Warden Blackwall; he would instinctively sense when his assistance was required, would pick up on her gestures and sighs and gently pry the letters from her hands and pretend he wanted to read them, too.    
  
  
_My lady,_  
  
_Your drawings are lovely, as usual. And filthy. Did I ever tell you how much I appreciate that?_  
  
_We’re riding through the Dales, still. Not much to report here, I’m afraid. The land is recovering slowly and there’s no sign of immediate trouble ahead. I miss you and I worry about you. Always._  
  
_Thom._  
  
  
  
\---  
  
  
  
They meet in a bar near the harbour in Kirkwall, once.  
  
Scheduled yet in-passing as he’s on his way to Orlais and she’s on her way back from it and Evelyn enters the room with a sense of excited _dread_ , as though she’s not entirely certain what to expect. As though the cluttered memory will have pained him awkwardly in his absence, got the heart and soul of him all wrong. But as she spots him by the only window in the room there is no doubt he’s still Thom Rainier.  
  
He looks the same yet somehow different. Older, suddenly. A little more grey in his hair, a little less definition to his contours. It makes her want to cling to him, hold him, chain him to this time and place.  
  
She wonders, but never asks, what she looks like to him in that dimly lit room where they’re the only guests for the first half hour. His hand over hers, her thumb rubbing against the worn leather of his trousers; he draws a hitched breath when their eyes meet, she shifts in her chair, feeling the presence of him tug at her composure and exhaustion.  
  
“How are you?” she asks instead of undressing him, instead of covering his shoulders and chest with wet sloppy kisses.  
  
And Thom shrugs in return, not sliding his hands down to cup her arse and groan something obscene into her ear in that voice, those low, dark notes of his voice reserved only for her, for _them_ . She doesn’t have to ask if he’s been loyal to her out there on the road; he tells her anyway.  
  
“Can't say I haven't been put to the test -- was a barmaid in one of those villages near the border where I stopped for a few nights who tried to talk me into coming with her to her room.” He takes a swig of his ale and Evelyn follows the motion, lips pursed. “Pretty, young-”  
  
“ _Hey_ , I’m not Sera.”  
  
“Right.” For a second he looks horrified, then his expression melts into something else; he sighs, looks down at his hands before meeting her gaze again. She knows he is hers with more clarity than she would have expected, but she enjoys his torment. "I’m sorry. Stupid thing to say. Not used to this.”  
  
Evelyn shakes her head, resting her forehead against his shoulder. “Just be silent and kiss me.”  
  
A low chuckle, then his arms come around her body and holds her to him and all the months of missing goes out with a shaky breath.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
He rides with a group of soldiers headed for the Dales, distributing food to the broken lands and its people. Around them beggars and ruins, hunched old ladies and skinny children and those are not his fault, the _war_ is not his fault, but he pauses before them anyway, wants to punish himself with their faces and that hollow look in their eyes.  
  
Before he left he had promised Evelyn not to drown in the misery he’d find but it’s hard, every day is so unrelentingly _hard_ and Thom hasn’t got half of her strength and almost nothing of her disposition. In the face of weeping broken soldiers and blood-stained ground, he falls, too. Not for long, but he falls. Bryton, the man he’s been looking for, has fallen too. Hanged himself before the events in Haven even took place, before everything around them went to shit and Thom wonders if it’s not for the best.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he tells Bryton’s sister who eyes him with a considerable amount of hatred. Pressing a small bag of coin into her hand, he turns on his heel and ignores the insults thrown after him as it dawns on her who he is.  
  
  
  
\--  
  
  
  
“I searched for you for _years_ ,” Frennic tells him in a filthy back alley in Starkhaven. Bloody awful place in general: the whole city’s tight and wound-up, locked in some kind of tense conflict that seems to affect the very air. It’s said Starkhaven went rogue after the rebellion in Kirkwall, that the whole city state slowly closed itself to the rest of the world, awaiting a release - war, open conflict to break the stagnation - that never comes because the rest of Thedas marched on. “Wanted to stab my sword through your gut.”  
  
“Can’t blame you. Wanted to do the same myself.”  
  
The man looks at him: bloodshot eyes visible through the mess of unwashed hair. “Yet you still live, Rainier.”  
  
Behind him, the wall reeks of the kind of filth that wears you down, traps you in its stench and squalor.  
  
“I do,” he agrees and thinks of Evelyn and Skyhold, of _purpose_ . “I’m trying to do better.”  
  
The other man gives a laugh - a hard, harsh thing that forces itself out of his chest like a wound breaking open.  
  
“Good luck with that, you worthless piece of _shit_ .”  
  
Thom returns to his horse with a cracked lip and a nosebleed and a head full of that same useless litany that’s been there ever since he was brought from his cell in Val Royeaux. _Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me._  
  
There’s no answer in the night air around him, nothing out there that accepts the burden of his guilt.    
  
  
  
  
\--  
  
  
  
  
Cerlaise refuses to talk to him, her face is turned away but he can still see the traces of lyrium addiction there; there’s a tremor in the way she walks, as if she’s carrying a hollowed-out echo of the woman she once was. That _woman_ , made of fire and reined-in magic hidden beneath her heavy armour and nobody knew she said but of course some people did.  
  
After his betrayal everyone did and she’s been on the run ever since, according to some templars he bribed on the ship over to Kirkwall. _You find her, serah, you’re a rich man._  
  
He wants to give her coin but knows where those would go, what addiction they would feed; he wants to offer his consolation, his regrets, all of his selfish bloody _grief_ but something in the way her eyes are broken makes him take a step back. .

 

\--

 

Inside the Hanged Man, fingers curled around the no-longer cold ale, Thom thinks there’s a lightness in the room. Klaus – the unfamiliar name sits strangely in his mouth but he uses it, forces himself to remember – rubs his hands over his face. It's a tired gesture but there's a hint of a smile in there somewhere.

“We're having a baby,” he says then by way of explanation, looking down into his ale. He swirls the goblet slightly. Does he recall Callier’s children every time he realises he will have one of his own? Can he hear them sing, can he feel them scream? _What do you think, Rainier?_

“I'm happy for you.” Thom swallows a mouthful of ale and all of his remaining apologies.  
  
There's a lot of things they could speak of but they don't. They sit there, shoulder to shoulder as the crowds begin to gather, _thicken_ around them, and Thom allows the ale to scatter his frantic thoughts.    
  
They will never do this again but it means a lot that they do, just this once.   



End file.
